Two Masters: God or money

When God created human beings, the Ten Commandments didn’t came with them. It took many generations later for God to deem the necessity of the Ten Commandments to be given. The only commandment Adam and Eve had in the garden was not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die." (Gen 2:17) If we take careful consideration of the Bible, when God gives a command, He is trying to prevent the likelihood of his creations to commit a sin. As in the case of Adam and Eve, theirs was not to eat the forbidden fruit while in the time of Moses until our generation, is to worship other gods. This is the very reason why the first commandment He gave, was for us not to have other gods (Exodus 20:3, Deuteronomy 5:7). The good thing with the Lord is when He created us He didn’t designed us like robots which can be programmed; He gave us freewill that He Himself will not override our decisions if we don’t want to obey. This is very important point for us to understand as without this freewill, we cannot consider ourselves to have had obeyed His commands. We have the choice to obey or not and will be answerable for its consequences. So when God commanded us not to have other gods, He already saw the tendencies of our hearts to worship those gods instead of worshipping Him alone. Obviously the Ten Commandments were given after the Israelites exile from Egypt where they were heavily influenced by the lives of the people who oppressed them. Psychologically speaking, the oppressed desire the lives of the oppressors. Although His people had idols long before their stay in Egypt (see Genesis 31:30, 35:2) the idea of having gods came to its worst in Egypt. The word “gods” appeared four times only in Genesis and then in Exodus 12:12 where God was against all the gods of Egypt. Apparently He wanted His people not to take the influences they had from the Egyptians, thus He gave them the commandments. In fact the ten plaques in Egypt represent their gods. My point here is every single one of us has the tendency to worship other gods and it is not limited to images as most of us think but it could be anything or somebody. Although the kingdom of darkness led by satan (I chose to keep it small letter) tries to deceive us and persuade us in every way possible to be drifted away from worshipping the only One, True, and Living God, Jesus didn’t say we cannot serve God or satan, neither did He say the root of all evil is satan. He clearly said, “We cannot serve two masters-God or money”. Of course Christians these days would be confident enough to say they don’t serve satan but unconsciously serve money which equates serving him (satan). In other words satan has been subtle in his ways always, as he always was. Since he cannot make most people worship and serve him, he diverted them from serving God to serve money. It is my desire to study and share this subject matter for us to stop for a while from our busy schedules and routines and think, consider, evaluate ourselves and answer this serious question-who do you serve, God or money? Before you give a quick answer for that, consider this fact when we pray in the morning or even in the evening. For most of us especially in the Western area, we only say a short prayer as we are rushing to go to work and in the evening, again another short prayer because we are tired from work. We spent thirty five to forty hours a week at work but struggle an hour of prayer or an hour listening His words. Jesus’ word is clear that we cannot serve two masters-God or money, for we will be loyal to the one and despise the other (Matthew 6:24). Unfortunately, majority of us or generally speaking are loyal to work and unfaithful to God. You might want to argue to that but unless it is a serious matter we go to work by all means without considering how tired we are, how good or bad the weather is, and how long we stay there while on Sundays we drag ourselves out of bed, always tired, always finding something else to do without consideration if we come late to services or how many absences we had. These practices are not being done at work but we simply do them towards God. Actually, the number one reason why people could not attend church services is their work. Isn’t it sad? Of course it is. People couldn’t be bothered in making adjustments to their schedule or rosters from work when it comes to church conflicts but when it comes to parties and holidays they will arrange changes of shifts or swap their schedules to be available for such occasions. The list could go on really. Instead of simply believing God’s Word to seek first His kingdom and live on His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto us (Matthew 6:33), we prefer to work, comfortable at work even on Sundays, and neglect our duties to God to make His day holy because this is a fact that we cannot hide, we serve money rather than God. May the Lord enlighten our minds and convict us in this area of our life so that at the end of our study we would be able to offer our lives unto Him as a living sacrifice, as an act of worship, and a reasonable service (Romans 12:1). Let God be God in your life.