When we used to live in the Bimini Islands in the Bahamas, one of our responsibilities as a shark researcher in the Bimini Biological Field Station was to take care of the skiffs (small boats). And once when trying to clean our skiff, I had one foot on the dock and the other in the boat that was tethered to the dock. However, I soon realized that this was not a good position to be in. One foot in the boat (not on solid ground) and the other foot on the dock (on solid ground) could mean only one thing. It was time to get wet. I found myself done a nearly 180 split and then I in the water, all wet.
The Bible records in the gospel of Matthew that ‘no man can serve two masters‘ (Matthew 6:24), wherein the masters referred here are God and mammon (money). These were the very words of Jesus. In fact, Jesus goes on to expand on this to the extreme, that we cannot serve both God (the savior) and money (our selfish desires), because we will end up hating one and loving the other or holding on to one and despising the other. The Bible counsels us that the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10). The Bible also warns us that He who is a friend of the world is an enemy of God (James 4:4) and I wrote about this earlier in the post entitled ‘ The law of reciprocal relations‘, but felt that it is appropriate to revisit this under the context of the ‘No man’ series we have been doing.
What does ‘no man can serve two masters’ mean? What follows after Jesus expressed this gives us the answer. To try to appease God and self, we would end up hating one and loving the other or holding on to one and despising the other. This means that while we feel that we can have one foot on solid ground (God) and one on our selfish desires i.e., love for money (not solid ground), we will find ourselves drowning in worldly desires, erring from our faith (1 Timothy 6:10). To be lukewarm in our walk with God, warrants a response on His part and that is, He will vomit us out of His mouth for we will be a distaste to Him (Revelation 3:16). Let our yeses be yeses and our nos be nos and yes, no man can serve two masters. Choose ye this day, whom ye will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
