Christian Family Services Ministry

12-2-2019 – A Word to the Wise – Matthew 6:24 says No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other you cannot serve God and mammon.” This is perhaps one of the most fundamental of all Biblical passages.
Several years ago Dr. Harold Hazelip taught some lessons from the Sermon on the Mount which opened the to some very practical meanings and applications to this passage. My work at Terrell State Hospital taught me that there is no doubt that compulsive addictive behavior enslaves one to the physical body with all of its desires and demands. The cares and concerns over the physical choke out one’s relationship with God and his fellowman. In sharp contrast to the self-induced anxiety over the quest for the material, Jesus calls our attention to His demands and rewards.
Jesus no more than says you can’t serve two things at once then He defines the “other” master as the quest for the basic necessities food, clothing and drink. One of the characteristics we learn of God in the Old Testament is that He is an uncompromising God. Now for the person who is unattached, uncommitted that person can have as many distractions along with its consequences as he pleases. However for the person who is a servant of God, who pledges allegiance to Christ Jesus, it is from that person that the Lord God demands allegiance. In the Old Testament He would say “I lam the Lord God who brought you out of bondage. You shall have no other Gods before me and I am a jealous God.” Then the Lord threatens to bring His wrath all the way down to the third and fourth generations for disobedience. There was a continuing effect about not making up one’s mind in His service. It reminds us of a generation nature of our own problems how alcoholism is handed down from one generation to another. The tendency for suicidal acting out to be generation in nature or mental illness being passed down from one generation to the next or particularly, the problems and difficulties associated with eating disorders going from one generation to the next. And thus, what we are being reminded of here is taking seriously who our Master is and realizing we just cannot serve God and riches or alcohol or drugs or sex or food This is a fundamental principle the keeping of which results in the return of order to the disordered life of the addictive person. So what we have here now is Jesus calling for a decision and He is clear about what that decision involves. One cannot serve God and alcohol. You just cannot serve God and money. One cannot serve God and food. You will find it impossible to serve God and drugs. The earthly and the heavenly do not mix. But if there is anything we are out to get, to pile up for ourselves, it is the material, the perishable to gain for ourselves by whatever name and by whatever means the material. Jesus is saying that we can’t have it both ways. We cannot go on pleasing ourselves and expect those pleasures to continue to give us pleasure, nor can we have the relationship with Him. So we are being warned of attaching our hearts to things of a material nature. Entangling our emotions with the temporary, searching for the immediate pleasures. These pleasures are going to be very short lived. Jesus has been talking in these passages about the kind of character that citizens in His kingdom are supposed to have, the kind of worship one is to give where the fundamental devotion of a person’s life has to be, and it doesn’t belong on earthly things. Jesus gives some examples and reasons. It doesn’t belong on the material because earthly things are temporary, they steal your heart away. Do you remember that short phrase in Luke 2 where Jesus has been talking about our anxiety and he says, “For where your treasure is there will be your heart also.”? If our treasure is in God, our heart is going to be in heaven but if it is in earthly things whether they be food, drugs, sex or any other addiction, then like Scrooge, we are going to be scrounging around trying to get more. Where the heart is put, the whole self will be. There has been some major research in the areas of addiction, particularly in eating disorders, alcohol and drug abuse. One of the significant findings is how such a simple task like dieting turns loose power full forces in our body and soul which wreak havoc at all levels of our existence the soul, the spirit, the mind and the heart. Suffice it to say our attempts to cope with self-indulgence in whatever area that may be, will usually end up in failure. In fact, it turns you away from. God. But let’s return to the basic principle Jesus is talking about here in the Sermon on the Mount and its application to our daily lives, particularly when we are dealing with addiction. Jesus goes on in this magnificent sermon to illustrate several different ways that material things (pleasure) takes over our hearts. What he says is if you put your affection on things material it will blind your vision. Remember that brief parable of the light of the body? If the eye is full of light, `the whole body will be full of light. But if it is dark, how great is that darkness. Really, it is a very simple analogy. If the eye is clouded, if it is stained a certain color, then the eye won’t focus. A person gets double vision or perhaps the eye is diseased. The result will be that one will stumble around as if in darkness. But if that eye is sound, then one sees clearly to make the various decisions of life. What Jesus is saying is that if you set your heart on earthly things, the addictive things, then the eye becomes jaundice and incapable of functioning as it ought. Everything coming into that body is tinted by that eye. A century and a half ago child labor was a great problem of the European world. Children seven or eight were employed in various mines in England with records of children as young as three being employed, sometimes even owned as slaves. Children would crawl on all fours all day long pulling a little truck along a track out of the mine or standing in water knee deep to scoop out water from a given place, or stand in a small ventilated area to open and close a vent door usually from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m., perhaps a half an hour off for breakfast and lunch. It is inconceivable that in the 1830’s there were no fewer than 84,000 children in England under fourteen employed in the mines. People thought little about it until men who were preachers and men who were writers began to thunder about it. We wonder now why people would do that. But the eye, the light, is tinted by what it wants most in life and if one wants wealth more than anything else, then there is no crime too bad to get it. A low type thief can resort to robbery, murder or arson. If he is a high type thief then fraud, deceit or chicanery. Either way, he gets his wealth at whatever cost. That has a real parallel with the addictive person and how much they are willing to surrender to meet the immediate need of the present and that is what Jesus warns us about keep the eye single and sound. Set it on God and the whole life will be filled with good things. Otherwise it will be corrupted. Where is your vision, what is it fixed on?