"Two Masters"

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Matthew 6:24

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Well this morning we're back in Matthew 6 now and we finished the last of these three paired statements that we've seen over several weeks now.
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Of course we saw a few times ago two treasures as Jesus compares treasures on earth versus treasures in heaven.
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Begins to dig at the things that we have our eyes toward, things that we desire, the place that we have our heart.
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Jesus says there our treasure is. And then we looked at two eyes, the eye that is good, the eye that sees things clearly and so the body is full of light as a result of that good eye, as a result of that good sight, that good desire.
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Or the bad eye on the other hand that allows there to be only darkness within, it can only see as it were the things of the earth, it cannot see the one who dwells in light unapproachable and therefore there's no light to behold without and therefore there's no light within and Jesus emphasizes the darkness of such a state, oh how great is that darkness.
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So two treasures, two eyes, and this morning here in verse 24 we consider two masters, two masters.
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No one, Jesus says, can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.
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You cannot serve God and mammon. So there's a stark contrast again, two treasures, stark contrast, two eyes, stark contrast.
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Here two masters, a stark contrast, but the contrast is in the heart, in the service of the servant, it's in the loyalty.
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So the contrast is not between the masters per se, but the contrast is within the one who would serve, the one who's trying to straddle and appease and be pleasing to two different masters in his life.
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The contrast is forcing this divided loyalty, this double -mindedness, this duality in the life of the servant.
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That's what Jesus is going to press. So we have to place the contrast in the right way. And again, in all of these paired statements,
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Jesus is getting at the revelation of one's spiritual state. Is it well with your soul?
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Jesus has paired these statements in the Sermon on the Mount to get at that question. Is it well with you?
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Is it well with your soul? What is the state of your spiritual condition? Are you truly my disciple?
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Will you truly follow me? Are you one who can be said to have entered into the kingdom of God?
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That's what these questions are designed to reveal. Jesus is speaking directly to his disciples.
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If that hasn't been clear, just on the surface of the fact that it's a sermon that is first given to those gathered at his feet, then it's very clear here in verse 24 as he, in the third person, describes the one who seeks to serve two masters.
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And then at the last part of verse 24, he shifts to the second person, and he's speaking now directly to his people, you cannot serve
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God and Mammon. So all the weight of these paired statements comes hurtling toward where you are, what you're seeking to do, what you desire, what your eyes are upon, where your heart is, how you're walking.
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You cannot serve God and Mammon. Well, real quickly, I just want to give a few details about the verse itself.
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This term, Mammon, it's an Aramaic term. It could be translated and is translated money, wealth.
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In a roundabout way, it could speak to possessions. The point here, of course, is not that money is inherently evil.
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That's not the point. Possessions are somehow inherently wrong. But it can be that money becomes a lethal idol in someone's life, that possessions begin to drive someone away from God's will, away from God Himself, away from the life that God desires, a life of faith, hope, and love.
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And Mammon has that potential. Mammon, of course, here is personified. So while it's just speaking to wealth, just speaking to, at a base level, possession, here we could almost give it a capital
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M. This is Mammon personified. This is Mammon now empowered to be an idol, a rival to God Himself, a master and a false
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God at that. The ancient church father, Jerome, he said, one cannot serve
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Christ and riches at the same time, but he notes Jesus does not say, he who has riches, that's not what
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Jesus says, he who serves riches, he who would serve Mammon, not one that has Mammon, in other words, one who has wealth or possession, but one who would seek to serve
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Mammon. And now Mammon is no longer your wallet or your 401K, now
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Mammon is your God, it becomes personified. 1 Timothy 6, of course, reminds us it's not money that is the root of evil, it's the love of money, it's the desire and the service of money that becomes a root of every kind of evil in this life.
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Riches, of course, are a bookend to where we began in these paired statements. Jesus was asking about the state of our soul by causing us to examine how we treasure the things of the earth.
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So we come full circle. The treasures of the earth are here, Mammon, Mammon's become personified.
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Jesus says, where is your treasure? What are you looking at? What are you striving after? Who are you serving?
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Is it your treasure in heaven, the Lord God Himself, or is it your treasure on earth,
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Mammon personified? This passage, of course, is not ultimately a condemnation of wealth, but it is a call for exclusive discipleship, a singularity of heart, a loyalty to the kingdom of God.
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Jesus says you can't straddle your way into the kingdom. God will not harbor another master.
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Some idolatrous service, He will not take second place. He will not have spiritual schizophrenia at His throne.
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It's a call for exclusive discipleship. God must be first. God must be served, and no man can serve two masters.
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And so those are the details of the passage. A slave, of course, could attempt to serve two masters.
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There's some commentators that point out in antiquity we know of a few occasions where a slave was employed at the service of two separate masters.
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I don't know if any of you have ever had a job where the authority structure was somewhat lacking, and you ended up not having a clear delineation of who was the actual manager, who was the actual shift supervisor.
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And so you just have two bosses, two managers, too many chefs in the kitchen.
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That is a hard place to work. Hey, whatever you're doing, you need to stop and go do that. Well, he just told me to do this.
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Yeah, you just need to. Hey, why'd you stop doing that? Well, he just told me to stop. That's a hard place to work.
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Ultimately, the servant cannot serve wholeheartedly, cannot serve with a single mind, a single purpose, a focused, consistent effort, undivided attention to the will of the master.
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If there's another master barking out orders, that servant will be unable to serve in the way that he is desired to serve.
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If there are two masters, there will be no loyalty. Single -heartedness is impossible.
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Again, what Jesus is after is an exclusive devotion to God himself, an absolute prioritization of the kingdom of God.
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Where we're going in this passage, Jesus will say, seek first your loyalty, your principal focus.
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The boss of all bosses in your life is the Lord God himself. He demands an absolute priority.
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Now this morning, although I grant fully that the immediate context of verse 24 is warning against and speaking about wealth and possessions,
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I feel that we've already established that with the first of the paired statements about treasures on earth.
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Remember the insight of the Puritans that we are to use our possessions, use our wealth in this world, rather than allow our possessions, the things of the world to use us, churn us up and spit us out.
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I believe we've established enough about the importance of wealth and possession in the teaching of Jesus.
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What I'd like to do with verse 24 is enlarge this idea of servanthood.
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And so I'm asking for a little liberty to take a step back from the immediate context of verse 24 and think at large about how
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Jesus conceptualizes this idea of a servant. Because this is not the only place in Matthew's Gospel or throughout
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Scripture where God's people are called to this idea of service, this identification of servanthood.
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And I feel that we'll miss the opportunity if we don't take it this morning to get at Jesus' conception of what it means to be a servant.
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Of course this is difficult for us. I use the word servant because to use the word slave, which is just synonymous, carries a lot of baggage with it as a result of the history of chattel slavery in the
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West, which has had the effect of obscuring and muting a lot of the biblical import of slavery.
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So slavery is automatically negative, something abominable. Because of the legacy of chattel slavery in the
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West, it's very hard for us to think positively about the idea of slavery. But in the ancient world, the term was a lot more neutral than it's become.
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There was a lot of negative aspects to slavery. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul could say, listen, if you're a slave and you can get freedom, you should do that.
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Seek it. But if you can't obtain freedom, nevertheless, seek the
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Lord's will in that. You're serving the Lord Christ. And so there's an idea that there's a negative aspect to slavery, even in antiquity.
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It's not something necessarily desirable. But then there's a lot of positive aspects to slavery in the first century.
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And that gets obscured and lost because of the legacy of our own history of slavery. Of course, what we react to is the inherent indignity of slavery.
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It chafes against our idea of liberty and freedom. The painful legacy in our own nation causes this sort of stain of disgrace on the very connotation of having to serve.
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The idea of being someone else's slave, belonging to someone else, it outrages our modern sensibility.
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But to that degree, we're not able to understand this as a concept biblically. I think this trickles down even into customer service.
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I don't know. This is my old man rant. I say it probably once a year, but customer service has fallen on hard times.
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You get the idea. It's no longer customer service. How dare I be a servant to any man?
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It's like, well, you're an employee. I don't know why companies still try. You walk into Moe's and the employees there are supposed to, as soon as that door opens, have this big cheesy smile and go, welcome to Moe's.
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You're all excited to order your burrito. If they even say it now, it's like, welcome to Moe's.
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So much for service. Sometimes you put in your order at a place and it's like you've offended them.
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I'm sorry. Do we know each other? Have I hurt your feelings or something? Very cool. So there's my old man rant.
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Customer service has fallen on hard times. The idea of service has fallen on hard times.
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If you're like me and you watch bizarre things in the wee hours, you could watch 80s training videos online that train for customer service at, say,
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Pizza Hut or one of my favorites, Old Country Buffet. It is hilarious to watch how companies would try to train people to serve and their expectations of what interactions ought to look like and their wild -eyed imagination of how someone would be so excited to serve customers and get behind that corporate interest.
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But this is really at the heart of what Jesus is getting at. How do we think about service?
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How do we think about the identity of being a servant, of having a responsibility to be ever involved in the will of another, to always be looking to please our master?
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That's at the very heart of Jesus' teaching here about what it means to be a servant. And so though it's hard for us because of what we know of modern slavery, the legacy of chattel slavery, though it's very hard for us to understand what slavery was in antiquity, we have to try to get at this larger picture of what it means to be a servant.
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I want to give four aspects of what it means to be a servant this morning.
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And those four aspects are, first, the identity of the servant, secondly, the call of the servant, and I wrestled with which of those two
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I should have put first because in a way the call to be a disciple is the call to be a servant.
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We're going to establish that and so I said, well, should I begin with the call and then from that call you receive the identity?
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But I actually think in our experience we have to begin with the identity. And when we begin with the identity, then we can look and see the way that this is our calling.
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So that's why I put it in that order. So first, the identity of the servant, secondly, the call of the servant, thirdly, the desire of the servant, which really gets at the heart of what
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Jesus is saying here in verse 24. What's the desire of the servant? And then lastly, what this all requires, the mind of the servant, which is a pointed way of getting at the heart, the instinct, the reaction, the outlook of the servant.
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Okay? So identity, call, desire, mind, and we begin first with the identity of the servant.
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Just at face value, when you start reading Scripture and start paying attention to this language of servant or service, a lot will begin to blossom.
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We tend to just read right past it. We don't notice little statements, like I was just reading in Numbers 12, and you have
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God as He's rebuking Miriam and Aaron, and He basically says, you know, with the prophets they have to gather and sort of look into the things
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I'm revealing. Moses, I speak to him face to face. Why then did you not fear to speak against my servant,
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Moses? We tend to just read right past that. But notice how Jesus is framing, or how the
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Lord is framing Moses' identity. My servant, Moses. You're chafing against His authority as the leader of Israel.
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Who is He to me? He's my servant. So if you're chafing against Him, you're actually chafing against me.
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Which is why, though Miriam and Aaron think, you know, we could do so much better, boy, if we just had our shot in the sun, look at all these things that are against Moses, what a unprofitable and worthless leader he's become.
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Just give us our shot, our day in the sun, you know, and who could disagree with the flaws that we're seeing?
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And they think God's like, yeah, you're totally right, Miriam and Aaron. Let's just get, who even asked this guy to be a leader?
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When Miriam and Aaron and Moses are all called to account at the Tent of Meeting, I think
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Aaron and Miriam fully expected somehow that God was going to be like, yeah, you're right, Moses, you need to sit in the corner, you know, you're going to have to hear this now.
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It goes the entirely opposite direction. Miriam is struck with leprosy,
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Aaron is actually fearful, Moses, being the most humble man on the face of the earth, begins to intercede and cry for mercy.
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You see the issue of authority there, that they misunderstood the authority that Moses understood.
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I'm his servant, flawed though I am, I'm his servant. And if you notice, the
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Lord constantly is doing this throughout Scripture, he's describing his people as his servants. My servant
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David, the king speaks of all those in his realm as his servants.
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So, all those that are made by God belong to God, they're all at his employ, they depend on him, they're provided for by him, he is the master of all.
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All, therefore, owe a certain service to the Lord God, all were made by him and therefore for him, all are dependent upon him, they belong to him.
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The cattle of a thousand hills belongs to him. So the idea of servanthood, the idea of being a servant is replete throughout
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Scripture. Revelation 22, verse 3, even where there's no more curse, even where the effects of the fall have finally, in consummation, been overturned evermore, there's no more curse, the throne of God, the lamb is in it, established forever, and what do we read in verse 3 of chapter 22?
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There his servants will serve him. You don't graduate from being a servant.
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Angels who are peerless in glory, without sin or spot, are called his servants.
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In consummated glory, when the curse is removed, we are still his servants. Romans 16, when
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Paul speaks to others in the church, when he thinks of himself, he speaks of them as servants.
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He mentions Phoebe, who's a servant in Colossians 1. He says, you've also learned from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who's a minister of Christ to you.
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Colossians 4, he says, Tychicus, a beloved brother, a faithful minister, a fellow servant in the
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Lord. He speaks of himself as a bond -servant to Christ. He introduces himself to the Philippian church in that way, and there's a reason why.
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That's not his normal introduction. He normally reminds people, I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ. He's coming to a church at Philippi where there's all this sort of tension and division over Euodia and Syntyche, and he's trying to get them to unity, but they're batting heads like rams.
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And so how does he introduce himself to the letter? He doesn't jockey for position. That's probably what they were doing, jockeying for position.
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He introduces himself in this way, a slave to Christ. And by the time he gets to that issue, he says, you need to have the mind of Christ.
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That's where we're going to end the message this morning. To the church at Corinth, he says in chapter four, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ.
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He's an apostle. One, as he as he notes, who was born untimely, but nevertheless, he saw the resurrected
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Lord in a very intimate and personal way. It wasn't a it wasn't a group on experience of the resurrected
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Lord. It was a very personal, individual experience of the resurrected Lord. And he was made an apostle of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. A pillar of the church of God. A foundation stone for the true
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Israel. And what does he say to the church at Corinth that loves pedigree, that that craves stature?
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Give us your CV, Paul, are you worthy of actually having us sit under your teaching?
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You know, we've got these other super apostles, very, very impressive. You know, how do you compare with them?
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And Paul, seeing that worldly craving, seeing that they desire the wisdom of the world, the might of a fallen man.
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And he's saying, you know, when I came to you, I didn't come with wisdom. I didn't come with might. I preached Christ in him crucified. You want to know how you should regard me as a servant?
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All men ought to regard us as servants. So in Paul's mind, despite all of the things that he has given, he never graduates from this idea from the self -identification of slave.
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Now, the primary issue at work with servanthood is belonging.
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Grant Osborne makes this point that the primary aspect of the slave metaphor for first century readers was belonging.
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The act of service is only secondary. The central connotation of a slave is who you belong to.
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My master, the will of my master. So we shouldn't begin with the the acts of a servant, but rather the possession of the servant, who you belong to.
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That's the primary thrust. That's why everywhere you find this language servant, you'll almost always find it in a phrase like servant of Christ.
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Men ought to regard us as servants of Christ. A slave, of course, is bound to the will of another in this position of servitude.
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But that relationship could often be very close. There were binding ties with a master. There was a sense of belonging to him in the ancient
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Roman economy. A bulk of that economy were actually freedmen, those who had served their masters well and in their master's good grace, they were able to be freed.
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Sometimes a master did it benevolently. You've been so loyal, I'm going to free you. You're now free.
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So you occupy this new status. You had an absolute freedom now, but never did the loyalty leave.
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Sometimes slaves would purchase their freedom. They'd be able to have some money put aside over time and they could actually purchase their freedom.
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But sometimes they were just freed out of the benevolence of the master. And yet that freed person would show up every morning.
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They would open up the doorway and walk down into the atrium and they would gather with all of the other workers and servants and freedmen.
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And they would say, how can I serve you today? What can I do for you? Not as a slave, but now more like an employee to be hired for certain work or certain tasks.
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So they were still in a way dependent upon their former master and they still were very loyal to their former master.
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These freedmen would go on to have servants for themselves. This was very common in antiquity.
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So there's a positive aspect. But notice the loyalty, the sense of belonging. That's what's at the very heart.
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The will of the slave, the will of the servant in time would become absorbed with the will of the master.
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Second Corinthians four and five. We don't preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus, the
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Lord and ourselves, your bond servants for Jesus' sake. So Paul recognizes not only do
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I belong to Jesus and therefore I serve him, but because I serve him, he has a certain role for me to serve you and I serve you for his sake.
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My service to you is actually the outflow of my service to him. So I don't proclaim myself. I don't stomp around after my own reputation.
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I proclaim Jesus Christ, the Lord, and I'm a servant to you for his sake. Galatians 1 10.
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Do I now persuade men or God? Do I seek to please men? If I still pleased men,
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I wouldn't be a bond servant to Christ. So in all the ways, 1 Corinthians 9, that Paul will be flexible, a
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Jew to the Jews, a Gentile to the Gentiles, that by all means he might win some, whatever that might have looked like, that sort of way of persuading, that way of taking thoughts captive to Christ, of being evangelistic.
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He understood at the root of it all, it's not actually to please men. It's actually to serve God. To the degree that I'm living horizontally,
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I'm losing my identity. To the degree that I do all things horizontally in light of my vertical relationship with God, I remember at the root of it all,
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I'm a servant. That's my life. I belong to God, I serve him.
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Notice that in Matthew 6, verse 24, Jesus takes for granted that all of us will serve.
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Jesus assumes you're going to serve someone. You're going to serve something.
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No man can serve two masters, but every man will serve something. This is not something you opt out of.
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Your life is completing the will, performing the desire, seeking after the accomplishment or the goal of something or someone.
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We're all serving. Don't believe the lie of the New Hampshire state license plate.
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There's no absolute way to live free or die. We're all servants in one way or another, in the absolute sense.
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We're all serving someone or something. So the question is not whether or not we're going to serve.
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The question is, who are we serving? What are we serving? That's the issue. The idea that we've never been.
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I used to be free and then I became a Christian. I guess I had to learn how to be a servant.
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That's a myth. You go from service to service. You actually only replace masters when you become a
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Christian. We're all servants. The idea that we've never been and never would be a servant is what
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Jesus rebukes in John 8. Remember the reply of the
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Jews to Jesus in John 8 is, we've never been enslaved to anyone. They're saying that literally under the shadow of Fortress Antonia.
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They have Roman overlords. We've never been enslaved to anyone. We're sons of Abraham. Like, do you know your own history?
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You've regularly been slaves to other people. We've never been enslaved to anyone. And Jesus says in verse 34,
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John 8, most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits a sin is a slave to sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever.
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Whoever sins is serving sin. He goes on to say, you're children of your father, the evil one,
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Satan. You do the will of your father. You serve your father. You accomplish his will.
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There he's even pressing in that nature of belonging. You don't belong in the sense that a slave belongs without any real relational affinity, but rather just sort of a voluntary service.
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No, actually, you're the spawn. You do what you see. You do how you are represented.
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That's what Jesus is getting at. And so if you're a Christian, you used to be a slave to sin.
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You served sin. Sometimes you hated serving sin, but you still served it. Often you loved serving sin.
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You willfully, joyfully did so. Sin was your master. Sometimes that seemed to be a helpful, healthy, good relationship.
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In time, you realize those chains were quite thick, quite miserable. You were enslaved to sin. You could not escape that slavery, the bondage and the tyranny of the evil one.
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And then as a result of becoming a Christian, now you've been freed from those chains, freed from that tyranny, but you haven't been freed from the idea of being a servant.
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You've only obtained a new master who is infinitely good, infinitely wise. A master who's not only freed you, but has provided all that you need to flourish in a life of joy and peace, to give his own joy, the joy he has with his father, and to share that with you.
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He calls you into his service, and yet he's the one who's actually actively serving you. He ever lives to make intercession for you.
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He has a servant heart. And therefore, when being a servant means you have a heavy burden, a yoke that is very hard to bear, he reminds you, no, no, my yoke is light.
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My burden is easy. I've borne the thing that you could not carry.
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I've carried the weight that would crush you. I've actually allowed to crush myself. This is the one who calls us into his service.
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So the Lord has freed us from the bondage to sin, and now we belong to him.
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It's not a tyrannical bondage. The chains don't slice our flesh. It's a light yoke.
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It's a burden we can actually carry. It's a joy to know him, to allow our wills to be absorbed into his will.
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We belong to him, and it's our joy, our delight to be able to serve him to the degree that we behold him rightly and understand his calling upon our lives.
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A new master, a gracious master. My point is, though, we're freed from the tyranny and bondage of sin.
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We're liberated from being slaves to sin, slaves to the evil one. But we're not liberated from slavery itself.
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We're not liberated from servanthood. We just have a new master. Paul explains this in Romans 6, verse 15 and following.
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He gets to the point where he says, having been set free from sin, so there it is, there's the liberation. You've been set free from sin.
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You became slaves to righteousness. You've been set free in one area.
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You've been enslaved in another. If slavery is automatically negative to you, you'll miss the whole point that Paul's after.
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You used to belong to the bondage and tyranny of sin. Now you belong to righteousness. You used to haplessly perform the will of sin.
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Now you voluntarily perform the will of righteousness. So Paul presses it further.
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Now present your members as slaves of righteousness to holiness. A few verses later, having been set free from sin, having become slaves of God, you now have fruit to holiness.
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And the end of that is everlasting life. So Paul recognizes in a real way, we've been set free, liberated.
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The exodus has been ultimately realized in the redemptive work of Christ. We've been brought out of, as it were, the the tyranny of Pharaoh.
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God, as it were, pouring out his plagues not on the evil empire of Egypt, but upon his own beloved son.
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And he's liberated us. And we're reminded it's because we've been freed now that we can serve him.
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And so when he gathers his people out of the land of Egypt to himself and he says, you will be my people,
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I will be your God. You will serve me in the wilderness. That's what
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Paul's getting at here in Romans six. Of course, he understands this. We're made to serve. Service is inescapable.
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The only question is, who are you serving? And Jesus here in Matthew six says no man can serve two masters.
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You can't serve sin and God. You can't serve Satan and the Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot serve earthly treasure, the things of this world, the hopes and possessions of of of a cursed environment around you and also serve the living will.
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Of God. Having been set free from sin, if you are a believer, you are now a slave of God, you have fruit to holiness.
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The end of that is everlasting life. So that's the identity of the servant. Well, secondly, the call.
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The call. Paul also says to the church at Corinth, don't you know you're not your own?
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You've been bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body. Now, it's implicit within that verse.
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But what metaphor is driving that language? What metaphor is actually allowing the idea of being bought to function?
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It's the metaphor of slavery. You have a master that bought you. He paid money for you.
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You belong to him now. That's Paul's argument. It's a slave argument. You're not your own.
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You have a new master. Your whole life is about his will now. You've been bought with a price. He paid good money for you.
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And here, taking that metaphor to its height, he says, you've been bought with a price. And of course, the price was the blood of the son of God.
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You've been bought with that price. He bought you with his own blood. You belong to him. Therefore, glorify
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God in your body. Paul expects us to have a certain power, a certain motivation in the believer's life.
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You belong to him. You're a servant of him. Why? Because he bought you with his own blood. How could you think to do anything less than glorify him with your body?
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That's the argument. It's your calling, Paul is saying. This is why you were bought. This is your task.
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This is your purpose now. I am entirely convinced that half of our trouble.
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I don't say all, but half of our trouble. In the life of faith.
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In overcoming the situations and circumstances that are so distressing to us. The relationships, the issues that are so discouraging and power sapping and faith disheartening.
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Half of the issue is that we've totally lost our idea of calling. Calling when
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Peter addresses the church and he he says, of course, you're experiencing suffering.
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He doesn't elaborate upon the nature of that suffering. There seems to be generally an idea of persecution, but it could have been suffering, injustice, maltreatment, all these things.
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And Peter actually says, you forgot your calling. He says, don't forget you were called to this.
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Christ himself also giving you an example that you would follow. So so when
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Peter sees discouraged, weary, disheartened, weakened Christians, he says, you forgot your calling.
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You haven't been looking at Christ. He gave you this whole example to follow. You forgot your calling.
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You belong to him now. He said you have to follow him by picking up a cross. He never said it was going to be easy.
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He said it was going to look like self -crucifixion. You forgot that calling. You forgot the example he laid down for you.
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That's the call of a servant. So I asked the question, if that's half the trouble, are you discouraged by the way things have taken shape in your life this morning?
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Where are all my ambitions going? What have they amounted to? Either because they've fallen through my fingers or because I've achieved them and I feel as empty and hollow as I ever did.
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Where's where's my vocation heading? What are these relationships going to bring about?
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All these relationships that are so costly and they've deteriorated. Why am I why am I facing these things?
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What are the things that are weighing down on your soul? What are the areas that you're so prone to to grumble and kick?
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Half the discouragement, half the trouble is you forgot the calling. You forgot that you're a servant.
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You are in the place, in the time, in the relationship, in the circumstance that your master has placed you.
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It will be hard for you. It will continue to be discouraging to you just because it it's a hard place.
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It'll be hard to you. It'll be discouraging you just because it's a hard relationship. But don't make it harder than it has to be by forgetting.
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I don't belong to myself. I'm not in this relationship. Ultimately, I'm not in the circumstance ultimately because of my will and how
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I'm going to serve myself. I belong to God. I'm his servant. I need to do his will in this way, at this time, in this place.
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Half the trouble is we've forgotten our calling. At an extreme, we can be so weighed down by difficulty and weariness that we begin to think, my master doesn't love me.
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My master is not that wise. If he was wise, he would never allow these things to happen in my life. My master doesn't care for me.
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If he notices what's happening, I don't know if I can trust him because I would never allow something like this to happen to someone
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I love. So either I'm I'm somehow rebellious and he's punishing me or I can't trust him and he doesn't actually love me or he's aloof and he doesn't have wisdom.
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He certainly doesn't have control. And this whole train of thought, of doubts, of fear.
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Begins when I forget who I belong to and that my will is ultimately to serve him. He brings into my life.
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He brings into my circumstances. He brings into my own body. The things that accord to his will.
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It's of no matter, I'm to serve him, I'm to accomplish his will. Half of our issue is we forget our calling.
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How do you get martyrs in the ancient church? How do you get martyrs in the modern church?
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You get a people that understand their faith as a calling upon their entire lives, my own body doesn't belong to me.
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And so I can freely give it away for the service of the kingdom. When you have Ignatius in the arena about to be devoured by sword and beast.
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You remember his famous statement, 80 and six years, I've served my master and he's never failed me or done me wrong.
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That's how you get someone like that in the arena. I'm serving my master. My life's not my own.
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That's the mindset, the logic of the one who's able to overcome every trial and difficulty in a life of faith.
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It doesn't make it that much easier to go through it. But there's a hope that becomes a ballast.
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So you won't drown in the midst of it and you won't wallow and writhe and do all sorts of collateral damage as you're wrestling and writhing through it.
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Why? I've been called to this clearly. He's allowed this to happen clearly. I belong to him clearly.
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He's my master. So you need to learn, in other words, that the call of the servant is to turn toward God's will away from your own will.
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Yeah, it's not how you'd want it to be. Things aren't going the way, the direction, the end that you want them to go. It's not your will.
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It's not your direction. It's not your your goal that ultimately is of God's concern. It's what God wills.
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So you learn to turn away from your own will and turn toward God's will. Boy, that sounds a lot like what Jesus taught us to pray a few verses ago.
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Not my will, but your will be done. That's slave language.
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Imagine if back in Genesis, you remember our time in Genesis. Imagine if back in Genesis, Joseph just gave up working.
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Well, I had this dream that my whole family was going to bow to me. I felt very close to God.
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I felt beloved of my father. I felt that I was going to lead my whole family in the promises of God.
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And look where that got me. In a pit. So much for serving
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God. He's wronged me. I didn't deserve this. And so he just has a cycle of self -despair.
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And he takes depression naps and he won't talk to anyone. And he begins secretly in his heart to have this root of bitterness toward God.
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If this is how God is going to move in my life when I'm trying to obey him, I'm not going to waste any more time.
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Look what obedience got me. Why would I continue to serve him? Now I need to look out for myself and try to try to right this wrong somehow.
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Maybe I'll run away and just start a new life somewhere else. Instead, we look at Joseph.
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We realize even when he could make no sense of why things happened the way they did, he was clinging by his fingernails to the will of God.
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Of all the by faiths in Hebrews 11, that's the by faith that just. Strikes a chord deep within my heart by faith,
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Joseph, and he didn't have scripture to constantly turn to and rehearse.
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He had two dreams, two dreams. That's all he had that we know of in the text.
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And yet he clung to that revelation from God, whether in the fields of his family, when all was in favor in the slave quarters of Potiphar, when all seemed lost or in the dungeon when he was at the sort of bleakest depth in his life.
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And what did he do? He worked hard. He was the only guy in that dungeon that they didn't have to lock the cell door.
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He began managing the place. He was the ruler of the roundhouse. And it didn't matter.
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He served in the same way in the pit of the dungeon that he did as the right hand man to Pharaoh himself at the depth in the most basest experience of his life to the very heights of power and grandeur.
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It was the same man serving in the same way. Why? Because he recognized, I'm just serving
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God. God puts me where he pleases. I serve him there. Where will
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I be tomorrow? Dungeon or throne room? It won't matter to me. I'll just serve God. That is my calling.
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That's Joseph. And this really gets at the desire of the servant.
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Thirdly, the desire of the servant. So the identity, the call. And I said again, if you identify yourself as a servant, if you recognize, as Paul does, men ought to regard us as servants.
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I ought to regard myself as a servant. To the degree I do that, I look at my whole life and everything in front of me as a call for service.
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Jesus himself understood that. In the book of the scrolls, it is written of me, he says, here
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I am, Lord, I've come to do your will. That's slave language.
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Here I am, completely about your will. That's the call.
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I don't know what you'll bring. Well, will it be the joy of thousands gathering to hear
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Torah? Will it be the despair of seeing those same thousands turn aside? Will it be the splendor of watching disciples begin to understand and perceive things of the kingdom?
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Or will it be the frustration of watching them miss it completely, entirely and begin to grumble and infight with each other?
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Will it be the the glory of the of the rest and the peace of the lilies of the valley and the provisions of God?
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Will it be being hurled into the wilderness to starve for 40 days? It won't matter to me,
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Father. I've come to do your will. The greater Joseph has come.
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That was his desire. The desire of the servant. Will either be for himself, his comfort, the minimal effort he needs to put forth the past muster, the bare minimum that's required for him to retain his position without any punishment or degradation, or he'll have a desire out of love to please his master, a desire to go beyond the things that his master expresses as a token of gratitude, as a token of love.
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So even a servant who only has one master will still have to face this challenge of of serving two masters.
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Because there's a master within the master of myself that fallen desire to be the captain of my own destiny.
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That's within my members. That's within my flesh. It's why Paul wrestles. There's times where I do the things
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I don't want to do. Not loyal. I'm not singular to my true master, my professed master.
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Jesus is getting at our desire. He warns against being lazy, lazy, unprofitable servants.
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Again, we just don't have time to do it this morning, but how many parables revolve around the concept of servanthood?
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Most of the parables have servants within them, most of them got to say something about the conception of the
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Christian life. And Jesus is in Matthew 25. He warns against lazy, unprofitable servants.
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What is the desire of a lazy, unprofitable servant? It's not the desire of the true master.
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It's the desire of themself. It's in other words, I'm a master to myself.
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Yeah, it's unfortunate. I have to kind of walk through the hoops he puts before me, but I do it in a way that I actually just serve myself.
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I'm my own master. Might show up to church and I might order my life and my work week in a certain way.
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But at the end of the day, even if others would be surprised, I'm actually just serving myself. I belong to me.
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And Jesus says, you might be at my employ superficially, but you're not a servant that's going to enter into my joy.
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You're not a profitable servant that I'll say, well done, good and faithful servant to.
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So Jesus is pinpointing the desire of the servant. No man can serve two masters. He'll either love the one and hate the other, or he'll be loyal to the one, despise the other.
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You see how you see how the contrast is formed. I can't serve two masters.
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I can't love God and love myself and my comforts and my will. Jesus says the end of that is one of those things will rise to the top.
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And if you have enough decades, you'll see that it looks like you love one and you despise the other. If you give it enough time, you're loyal to one.
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You hate the other. That's what Jesus is saying. Matthew 25, beginning in verse 14.
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The kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country who called his own servants, delivered goods to them.
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So here's a master. He has servants. He's given things to them. Twenty gave five talents to another two to another one, each according to his own ability.
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And immediately he went on a journey. He who had the five talents went, traded with them, made another five.
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Likewise, he received the two, gain more also. But he would receive the one, went and dug it in the ground and hid his
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Lord's money. After a long time, the Lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them. He would receive five talents, said, look,
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I've gained five more besides. The Lord said, well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a few things.
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I will make you a ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord. The one also who had two talents came and said,
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Lord, you gave me two talents. Look, I've gained two more. And besides them, the
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Lord said to him, well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a few things. I'll make you ruler over many things.
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Enter into the joy of your Lord. The one who had one talent came and said,
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Lord, master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, gathering where you have not scattered seed.
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And I was afraid. So I went and I hid your talent in the ground. But look, I'm giving you back what belongs to you.
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Again, before we press on, what kind of introduction is that? Master, look, look, you gave me five.
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I have five more. Look, master, master, look what you gave me. I was able to get an increase for you. I hope that's pleasing to you.
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We've been waiting for you. How was your journey? Put your feet up, get the ostrich fin. Where's my other servant?
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Oh, hey, listen, I knew you were a hard guy. Where's this contempt coming from?
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That's what Jesus is saying in verse 24. You'll either be loyal or you'll despise. You'll either love or you'll hate.
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This servant was about his own comfort. What's the least I have to do? Well, he'll be mad if I lose it.
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I'll just bury it. Then I can do whatever I want until he gets back. Oh, he's coming back.
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It's probably not a good look. These other servants did really well. Well, it's not really my fault. If anything, it's his fault.
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Listen, you've been a hard guy. Do you see the contempt? Do you see that he's despising the master?
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Why? Because he was never really serving that master. He never desired to serve that master. He was serving the master within himself, the master of his own flesh, the master of his own comfort.
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And so what does the master in the parable say to him? You wicked and lazy servant. That's the contrast.
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No man can serve two masters. You can't serve Mammon and God. You can't serve yourself and God.
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If you would enter into the joy of your master and hear the song of his voice say, good and faithful servant, well done.
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The last servant, of course, refused to invest. He has this excuse that the master is hard.
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Doesn't that sound a lot like the point we made? You're in a tough place, a tough circumstance. You're weary.
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You're discouraged. And you begin to think, this is unfair. I don't deserve this. My master must be cruel to have me here.
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This is, I shouldn't have to put up with these kinds of things. My master is hard to me.
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My master is not fair to me. I'm bitter about my master. What did he forget? His identity.
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What did he forget? His calling. What does he not have? A right desire. So he looks at his master in the wrong way.
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He looks at his identity and his calling in a completely wrong way. He wants to be a master to himself. If only I could fix things.
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You know what? And in my flesh, I will fix things. You've forgotten your identity.
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You've forgotten your calling. Who do you belong to? Who have you been bought by? That's the issue. A good and faithful servant is one who loves his master, delights to see him increase.
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These servants were looking for him to return. They knew he was going to return. The servant who buries the town, it's like, we'll pass that bridge when it comes.
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I'm not looking for him to return. In fact, it's the last thing I want. I have a lot of other things I want to do. There's no anticipation.
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There's no desire. Consider Jesus.
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Jesus, of course, is the one who gives us the fullest depiction of what being a servant of God is to look like.
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We look to our Lord and master and paradoxically, we understand what it means to be a servant of God. The more we seek to serve our master, the more we recognize all of the myriad ways he has served us at his own loss, at his own expense.
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And this brings us to the fourth and last point, the mind of the servant. Paul writes to the church at Philippi, therefore, if there's any consolation in Christ, any comfort of love, if somehow at GRBC there is any fellowship in the spirit of God, if that somehow could exist, if there's any affection, any mercy,
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Paul says, make my joy full by having the same mind, having the same love, having one accord, being of one mind.
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Don't let anything be done through selfish ambition or conceit. Don't be a master to yourself.
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Don't desire and serve yourself. Don't identify yourself as all, you know, the one to whom all things must bend and find satisfaction toward.
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No, in lowliness of mind, let everyone esteem others better than themselves.
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Paul says, I serve you. I'm your servant unto him for his sake.
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I so desire him. I so look to his appearing. I so love my master and absorb my will into his will that I see myself beneath you,
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Christians, and I seek to serve you as brothers and sisters, as fellow servants of God. Paul says, let each of you look not only out for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.
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And then he says, of course, the whole point here, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.
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And Philippians 2, as he presses into that, he tells us the mind of Christ and what that mind led
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Christ to do, the identity of Christ and what that identity looked like in time in the incarnation, the call of a servant.
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And we see that expressed here in this Christ hymn in Philippians 2. Because Christ had this mind, he made himself of no reputation.
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And just notice that he made himself of no reputation. What does it mean at base level to truly serve
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God? You chase his will, you don't chase your reputation. We've seen so many men of God, faithful, stodgy preachers fall over the past handful of years.
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Many of these men were conference circuit preachers. And I just wonder if at some point along the line, with the superficial service of God, they actually began to chase their own reputation.
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And therein they lost the mind of Christ. Have this mind in you.
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The mind of Christ who made himself of no reputation. He was brought in like a criminal, like some worthless slave to sit before princes and kings.
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And he never once grasped for the recognition that he deserved.
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Legions of angels can't even look to his face in glory. And he allowed himself to be jeered at and spit upon, mocked to become the running byword and the joke of the people that he made.
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He made himself of no reputation. Look at why, how?
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Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ, who made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a slave.
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That's why. Here I am. I've come to do your will. It's not my reputation.
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It's your will. It's your name. It's your purpose. It's your mission.
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That's what my whole life is about now. I've taken the form of a servant. What did that mean? I had to humble myself.
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So being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself. What did that mean? I had to become obedient.
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What does Hebrews say? It was through his suffering that he learned obedience. How do you learn to be obedient through the things that you suffer?
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Isn't that a strange word, obedience? Don't you expect something like to learn patience through suffering? To learn perseverance through suffering?
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Why this term obedience? To learn obedience through suffering. Why? Because you recognize the suffering has been granted to be by my master.
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This is my calling. So I learned how to obey my master's will through the suffering he sees fit to give.
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I learned to be obedient to his will despite myself, against myself. Do you see? Christ made himself of no reputation.
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He took the form of a slave. He humbled himself, became obedient through suffering to the point of death, even the cross.
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That's the mind of Christ. What does
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Jesus say in Mark 10? You know, he comes to the primitive church, as it were, the church in a microcosm.
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It's just 12 men, and two of them are jockeying for stature.
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They're full of this reckless spiritual pride. They haven't learned anything about the message of Jesus. I've gathered you all together, and they're like, yeah, but these losers, listen, can we have your right and left seat when you enter into the...
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It's like they haven't learned anything. So there's disunity. There's spiritual pride that doesn't learn how to love and walk with and patience.
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James and John jockeying for position, chasing reputation, looking and maintaining stature.
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And then there's a tent that, with like sin, they begin to bark and hate them. So now there's sin on both sides.
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There's a sin that caused this distance, and then there's the sinful reaction to that distance. And what does
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Jesus say when he's aware of this? How many times did this happen in his ministry, where he's through suffering, obeying the will of his master in heaven, of his father in heaven, and his disciples are just fighting and barking and glaring at each other behind his back?
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And aware of this, he called them to himself, just like God called
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Aaron and Miriam to the tent of meeting. It's like, let's reset this whole thing, because you guys have lost the plot.
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You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles, Lord hit over them. Great ones love to exercise authority.
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Not so among you. Are you my disciples? Did you hear the
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Sermon on the Mount? Not so among you. Whoever desires to become great among you will be your slave.
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Who of you desires to be first will be a slave to all. Because the
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Son of Man didn't come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.
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Do you see what he's doing there? He's telling his disciples, you don't have the right identity.
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You're jockeying to lord it over. And sort of fling things back and forth.
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You haven't understood your identity. You're here to serve. You forgot your calling.
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You think your calling is to be at my right and my left? You really, really want that? Listen, if that's your goal, I'll tell you how to get there.
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Become a slave to everyone. Make yourself of no reputation. Humble yourself. Learn obedience through suffering.
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Then you'll get to glory. You'll be first above all. Why? That's what I'm doing. That's my mind.
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That's my heart. That's my identity. That's my calling. That's my desire. The Son of Man didn't come to be served.
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So stop living your life as if everything must be about your service. Be like me. Have my mind, my identity, my calling.
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I came to serve. What does that look like? I give my life away. That's the mind of Christ.
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If there's anything so pernicious, so cancerous in the body of Christ in the modern day, it's this sense of entitlement that comes from the pit of hell.
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That's why Paul says, what do you have that you didn't receive? Why do you think you're entitled for something more?
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You've entirely lost the plot. You think you're here in this life to be served. You forgot your calling is to serve.
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Take the coin of that sense of entitlement and flip it over. What's on the other side of that coin?
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It's this woe is me mentality. No one understands. Oh, no one can see.
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Everyone else has it so much better than. Oh, look at that despair. What's on the other side of that?
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Oh, entitlement. It's not the mind of Christ. The mind of Christ is at odds with the sense of entitlement.
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That's why Paul says the only way a church can actually exist, the only way 12 disciples can actually become the foundation of the church is if they learn how to allow the spirit to overcome the will, the ambition, the deceit of the flesh, so that brothers and sisters can walk together in love.
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If I disparage, if I glare, if I claw my way against and over others, Paul would say I'm no longer walking in love.
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I must have forgotten something along the way about what it means to belong to Jesus, about who
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I am and what I am to do. So Christ is our example in all of these things.
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Listen, God created us to know Him and to serve Him and to enjoy Him as our God. He's our master.
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He's our maker, but we rebelled against Him. And in the fall, in Adam's fall, we rebelled against Him and our sins effectively shouted out,
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I refuse to have this master over my life. I'll become a master to myself. That is the sinful attitude of fallen man.
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That's the attitude and frankly the speech of those who are in a bondage to Satan. They like to think they're the masters of their own lives.
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They're actually just doing the will of the evil one who's relishing in the things that will one day become their ruin and misery.
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And I say this, especially to younger people in the room. You think you've got it all figured out?
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You think your life is under your control? Be warned, be warned. We're all serving someone.
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We corrupted all that was made for our good, for God's glory, our bodies, our minds, our affections, our intellects.
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We took the talents that a gracious God gave to us, even the gift of the breath of life. We took all those talents and we buried it in the ground so we'd never have to think about it.
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And we lived in contempt and did not look to his appearing. But God sent his own son to save and to redeem us, to buy us, to become his servants at the cost of his own blood, to pay a debt we could never pay.
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And in order to accomplish this, our Lord, our master became a slave. He does not call us to anything he himself has not done.
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He says, my disciples pick up my cross. Why? Because I picked up my cross. My disciples are servants.
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Why? Because I'm a servant. My disciples are obedient as they suffer.
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Why? Because I learned how to be obedient when I suffered. He calls us to nothing that he himself has not gone the way before us, to be the author and the finisher of our faith.
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So you want to have the identity, you want to have the right call, and all the relationships and things ahead of you, you want to look at your desire.
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Am I here to serve myself or to serve the one who called me, who bought me, who I belong to?
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Do you want to have the right mind? You look to Christ.
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I know we're pressing for time, but I have to at least include this before we close. Before the feast of the
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Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come, that he would depart from this world to the
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Father and having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end, and the supper now being ended,
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Satan already putting it into the heart of Judas to betray. Jesus, knowing that the
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Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper, laid aside his garments, took a towel, girded himself, poured water into a basin.
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I mean, do you just notice in the narrative, we don't need these details. Ancient writers are concise,
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Mark more than anyone. We don't need these details. John, you're wasting ink. Just tell us he filled the basin and washed his disciples' feet.
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But what does John do as he writes this? He's returning to that night in his memory.
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It's like he's narrating everything that he's watching and he doesn't even understand it. This is just another yearly Passover.
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And now, on the other side of the resurrection, he's looking back and he's writing in his gospel and he's recollecting what that looked like.
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You know, he arose and he laid aside his garment. And I remember him picking up a towel and then he wrapped it and he girded himself.
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And after he picked up water from this basin and he knelt down and he began to wash his disciples' feet.
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That was the act. That was the act that was part of this
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Lord's Supper. The emblems of a broken body and poured out blood. And what's the other emblem?
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What's the other token that he gives with that? I've given my whole life to serve.
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Judas is going to betray me. He who dips with me is the one who will sell me out. I've given my whole life for this.
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All things are now mine. I can do whatever I want in this moment. All things are mine.
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Hi, I'm finally my own master. All things have been given to me. That's what
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John records, right? Knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands. I can do as I please.
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But he remembers the prayer that he taught his disciples to pray. Not my will. I don't want to drink the cup, but not my will.
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I'm here to do your will. And so that the creator who once dwelt at the throne room where cherubs covered their faces as they screamed out in reaction, holy, holy, holy, now finds himself surrounded by blind and dull and infighting disciples who don't even understand the immensity of what's about to happen.
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And this king of creation drops to his knees like a slave and he scrubs the filthy feet of his followers.
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Because the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve. That was his mind.
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That was his identity. That was his call. That was his desire. What's your calling?
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How are you looking at your life? Where's your desire? Listen, wherever your desire is, wherever your treasure is, that's where your heart is.
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What's your eye like? Are you seeing clearly? Do you recognize where God has you?
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Is light filling your body such that you see the fingerprints and traces of his providence at every turn?
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You know that that means I'm called to this. I need to respond to this. It doesn't matter if I'm in the dungeon or in the throne room.
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I have a singular mind and a singular heart to serve God. I don't serve myself. I don't do the bare minimum. My whole life belongs to him.
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No man can serve two masters. Men ought to regard us as servants of Christ.
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I don't know that many men do. I don't think the world regards
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Christians as servants of Christ because most Christians don't even regard themselves as servants of Christ. We need to regard ourselves as servants of Christ.
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We ought to regard ourselves in this way. And let me tell you, there's no way to do that unless you have the mind of Christ.
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Do you want the mind of Christ? Look to him. Look at him.
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You know, when I was a boy, and I'm closing here. When I was a boy, there was this fad that ripped through all the
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Christian bookstores and VBS programs of getting a little rubber bracelet that said, WWJD, what would
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Jesus do? And all my 12 -year -old friends, we all had our WWJD bracelets.
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What would Jesus do? It's a good question of application.
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In this circumstance, in this relationship, in this time of trial, in this place of suffering, in this depressing dungeon, what would
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Jesus do? Let me tell you, you don't need a WWJD bracelet to try to ponder and speculate about that.
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That was the problem. You get all these 12 -year -olds speculating. The emphasis in the Scriptures is not what would he do hypothetically, it's what did he do?
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What did he do? You want the mind of Christ? You want the identity of a servant? You want that call and desire?
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Don't speculate about what would he do, which usually looks like what are other Christians doing, and then as long as I'm not going too far away from them,
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I'll be safe. No. You want to have the mind of Christ? You want to have the call of a servant? What did he do?
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WDJD is the bracelet that we need. What did Jesus do? The more you look at, the more you reflect on, the more you feast upon, the more your heart is humbled by what
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Jesus did, the closer you will be to surrendering your life, your will to His will, your ways to His ways.
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The more fruitful, the more effective, the more fervent you'll be as a servant to that glorious Master who shed
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His own blood to save our souls. Amen? No man can serve two masters.
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He's either going to hate one and love the other, or be loyal to one and despise the other. Let's pray.
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Father, we thank You for Your Word. Lord, make us doers of Your will, doers of Your Word.
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Make us faithful, fervent disciples. Forgive us, Lord. Forgive me.
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I often don't think of myself as a servant in all the ways I am. Lord, in my own flesh,
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I often straddle between serving Your kingdom and serving myself. How ready
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I am to bury talents, Lord, because I don't look to that calling. I don't look to You. How quickly
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I look to my own comfort, my own immediate needs, rather than looking first to Your kingdom for this very reason that I so often lack
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Your mind and Your desire and Your heart for Your calling. And so, Lord, I pray.
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I pray for myself. I pray for this body. I pray for my brothers and sisters that we would have the mind of our
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Savior. This day and all that unfolds from it, this week and all that flows into it, we would have this identity that our bodies are not our own.
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Our circumstances and times and ways and means are not our own. They all come from You. All are to be returned to You with interest.
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Help us to be faithful in this respect, Lord. Let us have the joy of our Master as we look to please Him, as we discount our own lives and all the things that are comfortable and precious to us.
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If they have Your hand or Your will crossed against them, may we quickly surrender them, as Calvin would say, quickly and sincerely.
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I give You my heart, Lord. May that be all of our desire.
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We ask these things in Jesus' name. And Father, I do pray quickly for those in this room who perhaps are under the illusion that they're masters of their own fate and captains of their own destiny.
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They haven't felt the chains and the miseries of being in bondage to sin. But as You say, whoever sins is a slave to sin.
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Might they see the glorious freedom that comes from Christ, the freedom that brings us into the family of God as adopted sons and daughters, but also into the service of God as servants of the
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Most High. Lord, do that work. Translate them out of darkness into Your light even this day.