Contentment in Christ Part 3: The Slave with Two Masters
Notes
Transcript
The Metaphor of Two Masters
The Metaphor of Two Masters
The metaphor of two masters is the final speech Jesus makes to solidify his point about where the heart of the Blessed Ones ought to be. He uses this imagery of a slave that belongs to two masters, which is a problem. In this time, slavery was not a controversial issue, although the Scriptures always held that slaves are equal to free men in the eyes of God. In a day where up to 1/3 of the Roman world were slaves, this metaphor would be quite relevant.
A slave is not an employee that puts his hours in, checks out, and goes home. A slave is human property and every aspect of their life is controlled by their master. Not just their work but their family life, recreation if any, position, and often even their life was in the hands of their master. Slaves could hold positions of great power, be governors, overseers, judges and so on. In Medieval Arabia, the Grand Visir was the slave of the King and held more power than anyone else in the land except his owner, the King. But a slave could also occupy the role of a common labourer, were obviously often abused, and had few if any human rights depending on the culture and time. In ancient Israel, an Israelite could only be enslaved by another Israelite to pay off a debt, almost a private form of community service except they were considered property by law. This kind of servitude would only last for 7 years unless the slave thought life would be better remaining with his master or the family the master may have given him than to be free, which was often the case. In the ancient world there was a lot of security in slavery if you had a good master. Being free meant you had to find food, work hard, and if you were a poor man with no prospects being a slave often preferable. It cannot really compare the slavery at that time to the horrific African American slave trade, the Arab African slave trade, or modern human trafficking. All of these would be illegal and punishable by death (Deut 24:7; 1 Tim 1:10).
Of course, in our modern context it is impossible to treat someone as a fellow image-bearer of God and enslave them because our historical and social context is quite different then Jesus’ context. The issue of the morality of slavery in the bible, as large and controversial a topic as it is, is not in the scope of our text. This should be enough for us to understand what is behind the metaphor.
A slave or bond-servant, Jesus says, is unable to serve two masters. A master has complete sovereignty over their slave, and it is as impossible for him to share the slave as it is for a King to equally share his Kingdom. While a slave owner may lend out his slave or put his slave in the charge of someone else, as was the case with the great abolitionist Olauda Equiano when he was enslaved in the 18th century, the slave still has only one Master and that master has the ultimate authority over those who serve him.
There are two conflicts of interest if a slave is to be shared by two masters, the first is a matter of loyalty and the second is a matter of devotion.
Loyalty. The slave, which is our hearts in this metaphor, is not a disgruntled slave but one who is affectionate towards their master. As hard as it is for us today to grasp this, a slave would often become almost a part of the family. If he had a good master, they could easily form a bond similar to that of Frodo with Sam, his servant and gardener, in Lord of the Rings. A master would expect not only obedience from their slave but also affection, and a strong bond could exist again similar to that of a King and his loyal subjects. This was the kind of relationship God expected from his People when he made a covenant with them; one of affectionate submission. But this relationship would be impossible with two masters. “He will either love one and hate the other” says our Lord. The kind of love a slave has for a kind and responsible master is singular and cannot be shared with another. This will be made clear in the effort that slave puts in to serve that master. If a slave has two masters, his divided affection will tend towards the one that is easiest and best to him, and the other master will be left out of his affections with the bare minimum done to serve him.
Devotion. The slave will thus be divided in his devotion as a result of his divided loyalty, and this will have the same result. He will be devoted to one and despise the other. The word despise here implies a sort of devaluing of something in your mind, seeing it is not important and even coming to see it in a negative light. Whereas devotion sees something or someone in a good, valuable light and acts accordingly. This devotion is displayed in his actions towards the person. That slave becomes devoted to the tasks the master gives him, values the rewards his master bestows on him, and goes above and beyond because of the high value he places on his master.
This is the picture Jesus pains. A slave with two masters is always going to be bent towards serving and loving one and away from serving and loving the other. Both cannot be served equally at the same time.
Jesus than takes this metaphor and in six words applies it directly and bluntly to his audience: you cannot serve God and wealth.
The Master of Wealth
The Master of Wealth
What is Mammon?
What is Mammon?
Where the ESV translates money is the Aramaic word mammon. Some older translations keep this word, and although there is debate about the exact historical meaning of the word, it translates quite clearly here and in Aramaic sources as meaning, wealth, money, or any kind of material gain. It is a broad word that encompasses property, possessions, and gain of any kind in this world. Mammon could refer to a job, a business opportunity, a precious item, material success, a property or house, the ability to do things that you’d like, power and prestige, anything that a materialist could desire. You may not be hungry for lots of money, but mammon covers all that your flesh, your earthly desires, could want. So stop for a moment and think about what mammon is for you. Think about the dreams you have that appeal to your earthly desires the most, that is mammon. You may not even think of them as earthly desires. Many have pursued money telling themselves that when they get it they will use it for the Lord, but this is a trap often laid down by Satan and our sinful hearts to justify the love of money. Few with such desires ever do it with their hearts set on heaven, which is why Paul says,
But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.
How Can Mammon be a Master?
How Can Mammon be a Master?
So the next question we might ask of our text is, how can mammon be a master? After all, these are my desires and I’m in control of them, right?
Well this is the heart of the problem. God created us with natural, physical desires. We desire food, fellowship, sex, and pleasure, these are not inherently bad desires. But what do we know about Eve when she committed the first sin? She looked at the forbidden tree, saw that it was good, and desired its affects, as so she ate. her desires led her away from God to serve something else: those desires.
Human desires are not the definition of good or moral rightness. Just because you want something that seems good, does not mean it is good. We know this of course, but when we don’t apply that to God’s will, it means the desires rule us rather than God.
Imagine you have a friend who likes to give you advice, ask you for things, and tell you what they’d like to do and you go do it. There’s nothing wrong with this. But what if filling the demands of that friend become such a priority that you start missing work, spending less and less time away from your family, and avoiding responsibilities. That is no longer a friend, but a master, able to control you to such an extent that the greater priorities in life are set aside. So it is with our desires. While the desire itself may not be sinful, such as the desire to eat, these desires easily become our masters rather than God. Listen to what Paul said about those he calls “enemies of the cross of Christ” in Phil 3:19
Philippians 3:19 (ESV)
Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.
Paul then counters this negative example with the reality of a true Christian Phil 3:20
But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
You are either one or the other. Notice that Paul’s description of an enemy of the cross is not that they are murderers, blasphemers, pagans, or atheists. It isn’t that they don’t go to church or have religious practices, but that they serve a different God with their heart. That God is their belly, or their own appitites and desires. Their minds are set on earthly things. This rules them. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they seem obsessed, but rather that they live for something other than Christ. Just as Christ says you cannot serve both God and mammon, Paul effectively says you cannot serve both your appetites, your earthly desires, and Christ. This doesn’t make you neutral, but rather an “enemy” of the gospel. To serve your appetites and desires is to serve another God: yourself, and is a violation of the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.” When any worldly ambition or desire, as good as it may seem, becomes the sole focus of our lives it becomes our god. Songwriter Ross King said it well,
“Anything I put before my God is an idol,
Anything I love with all my heart is an idol,
Anything I can’t stop thinking of is an idol,
Anything that I give all my love is an idol.”
Your Christian confession is not what determines your allegiance, but rather what or whom you serve. Paul tells us in Romans 6:16
Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
Mammon as a Master
Mammon as a Master
So if this is how mammon can be our master, what kind of master is it? Is it a master worth serving?
It is a master that demands everything. Again, you cannot serve two masters. Mammon is jealous as is God, and will have no competition with the holy. Your devotion to mammon will have you sacrificing more and more of your time, money, and energy until there is nothing left for the Lord. This was the case of the Israelites who were accused of robbing God in Malachi 3 by giving less than God required of them. Why were they giving less? It could only be because they were using resources that should have been for the Lord on themselves. Mammon had taken away what was rightfully God’s. I remember one man in a church I went to growing up who served regularily in the church until his son got into hockey. All of a sudden, the family stopped coming to church with any regularity because of the boy’s hockey games. Not only was this man serving his son’s sport rather than God, but he was leading his family to the alter of mammon and teaching them to serve there. Mammon demands everything.
It is a hard master. Mammon is relentless. Look at the drug addict begging on the street. She got there from worshiping mammon. And you may think the mammon you worship is not as harmful, but it is equally harmful to your soul. It cheats you out of true joy and replaces it with anxiety and misery. It brings along moth and rust to destroy the things you work so hard for in it’s service. If makes many demands of you and gives little in return, and what it does give is uncertain and sure to fly away. Eccl 2:11
Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.
It is a shameful master. You were not created to serve your desires, and so serving a master who doesn’t own you will bring you shame. Isn’t it shameful to obey someone who has no right to order you around? Weren’t Adam and Eve ashamed of themselves so that they clothed themselves in fig leaves after following their desires? If you are a Spirit-filled believer, pursuing the things of this world will be a shameful and unfulfilling experience, and the only way it wouldn’t be shameful is if you have been hardened to that shame, just as a serial fornicator is hardened to the shame of their actions. But if there is no shame felt in this world, there certainly will be in the next. Shame before God as you stand, with all your worldly accomplishments in the fire, and nothing to show for the many blessings God bestowed upon you.
It is an unrewarding master. A cruel slave-master gives nothing in exchange for the service done for them, and mammon is certainly no exception. All of your rewards will under-deliver, be exposed to the uncertainty of loss in this world, and finally become null and void upon your death. There is no reward in self-pursuits, which is what Jesus meant when he said in Matthew 16:25
For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
He’s not just talking about martyrdom, but a loss of the pursuits of this life. He uses strong language to emphasize this point in Luke 14:26
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
While this may make Jesus look like a hard master, he is not. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. If this is hard for us, compare it with the hard taskmaster that is your own earthly desires. Christ rewards these sacrifices as a man who fights bravely in war is often rewarded with public honour at home, but much more so. His rewards do not spoil; they are kept safe in heaven to be enjoyed forever. If following Christ means denying even our own family, like the Pilgrim Christian who had to head for the Celestial City alone because of his family’s unbelief, he rewards times and times over. Matt 19:29
And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.
It is transient master. You will pour out everything you have for it, and it will leave you. You may achieve all earthly ambitions, you may turn all you touch to gold, which is unlikely, and still he will leave you. Like a wayward mistress, once she’s had her fun with you, she will move onto the next lover, so as soon as you have fulfilled your lusts in pursuing mammon you will be left unsatisfied and ultimately have all taken away from you, either in life or in death.
God, the Heavenly Master
God, the Heavenly Master
So we have looked at the kind of master the world is, let us look at the kind of master our heavenly Father is.
He is a loving master.
He is a rewarding master. While this point was already made, I remind you that God is happy to show undeserved blessings to those who serve him faithfully and affectionately. An eternal Kingdom is ours to inherit and there is literally no reward or gift that we could possess that would be greater. Eph 1:3
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
He is a gracious master. God is not hard on his people, though we may sometimes take it that way. While God does discipline us and take us through hardship, it is meaningful hardship that ends in our good. God demonstrated this by sending Christ to be a servant alongside us. As the Author of Hebrews says,
For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.
and
For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
The hardships God puts us through were demonstrated by his own Son, who is God in the flesh, and so we can have confidence that, just as Christ was raised in glory, our suffering will also end in glory. Jesus also helps those who are being tempted through suffering, having gone through it himself. So while God will have hardships come upon you, they come not from an angry, hard master, but a gracious and kind one who disciplines us, not in angry punishment, but in the love a Father has for his child.
He is strict but fair. Although God is kind and loving, he is also strict. Just like Mammon, God calls for absolute obedience and affection. As we saw in passages already looked at, he calls for loyalty above even our earthly family. Jesus states it very clearly in
So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
However, he is fair in his strictness. A good father will be be strict in the right things and will discipline his child painfully to correct them, but he is also fair and gracious. He has a heart for his child and only disciplines them as much as is necessary. He does so for the good of his child, because there is love behind the strictness. Although parenting today has largely rejected the ‘tough love’ approach, it is true that children who have strictness and discipline, without the parents being overbearing, are happier and do better in life. So God is strict, there is no push around the heavenly Father who struck down Annaias and Saphira, but there is fairness and grace with him as with all loving parents.
He is our rightful master. This is really the ultimate reason why our heavenly Father should be served, he deserves it. The heavenly song in Rev 5:9-10
And they sang a new song, saying,
“Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on the earth.”
Notice how the focus of the song is that Jesus ransomed a people for God to be priests to our God. God is the focus of our salvation and Christ deserves those he suffered for. Quite frankly, you don’t have a say in the matter. You were bought with a price, will you deny Jesus that for which he spilt his blood? Will you defraud him by not giving him the service he paid for? Eph 2:10
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
To serve God is the purpose of both your existence and your redemption. You were made to serve a greater master than mammon.
Conclusion
Conclusion