11. How did Jesus show the futility of trying to serve God and one’s self? Matthew 6:24.
NOTE: ‘Christ does not say that man will not or shall not serve two masters, but that he cannot. The interests of God and the interests of mammon have no union or sympathy. Just where the conscience of the Christian warns him to forbear, to deny himself, to stop, just there the worldling steps over the line, to indulge his selfish propensities. On one side of the line is the self-denying follower of Christ; on the other side is the self-indulgent world lover, pandering to fashion, engaging in frivolity, and pampering himself in forbidden pleasure. On that side of the line the Christian cannot go. No one can occupy a neutral position; there is no middle class, who neither love God nor serve the enemy of righteousness. Christ is to live in His human agents and work through their faculties and act through their capabilities. Their will must be submitted to His will; they must act with His Spirit. Then it is no more they that live, but Christ that lives in them. He who does not give himself wholly to God is under the control of another power, listening to another voice, whose suggestions are of an entirely different character. Half-and-half service places the human agent on the side of the enemy as a successful ally of the hosts of darkness.’ Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing, pages 93-94.
12. How does Paul make clear that all depends on our decision who to obey? Romans 6:16.
NOTE: ‘How many today see the force and beauty of the truth; but they cannot serve God and mammon, and they hold to the world. The truth requires the sacrifice of the world’s honour, their position in business, their daily bread; and they falter and fail. They do not consider the promises of God to those who seek first the kingdom of heaven. They raise the excuse, “I cannot be different from those around me. What will people say?” “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey?” We must not study how to serve ourselves, but how to do the will of God. Christ left his glory, and clothed His divinity with humanity. He was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. For our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich. And yet, after this great manifestation of love on the part of Heaven, we are reluctant to yield our meagre treasures, so soon to pass away. The majority of the world sell their souls for a little worldly gain, when Christ has presented to us eternal riches.’ Bible Echo, February 15, 1889.