No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Luke 16:13
A strange story is told in 2 King 17, in which Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, captured King Hoshea of Israel, and moved the inhabitants of Israel and Samaria out of their land and into various regions of Assyria. Shalmaneser then moved other people into Samaria, people with no background at all in the Jewish religion and customs. Verse 25 describes how these people did not fear the Lord, so the Lord sent lions among them, killing many of them. Recognizing the reason for their plight, the people told Shalmaneser, who ordered one of the displaced priests to return, and to teach the new occupants of the land ‘the manner of the God of the land’. The priest, according to verse 28, taught them how they should fear the Lord. But all of the people were already serving the gods that they had brought with them from their various homelands. So they mingled the two, outwardly serving the Lord in the laws and ordinances that God had given to Moses, but in their homes serving their false gods. This sorry condition lasted for many years, with remnants of it still in place when the Lord Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar.
We live in a world today that is marked by multitasking, people trying to do several things at one time. We laugh at people who are so busy texting on their electronic devices that they walk into a tree or a pool, and we cry over those who are killed because some fool was texting while driving a car. But there is a form of multitasking that Christians are guilty of today that is just as dangerous to their souls. The world around us has many forms of entertainment and other activities that are so attractive, especially to younger people. So on the Lord’s day, these Christians gather with the Lord’s people and sing the hymns of praise and worship that draw our souls closer to our Lord. But on Monday, they plug in the ear buds that carry the world’s music of sin and rebellion and selfishness. That would appear to be very much like the people in ancient Samaria, mingling the profane and the holy, trying to serve the Lord one day and the world the next day.
It is not only in the area of entertainment that Christians dabble in the things of God with one hand and dabble in the things of the world with the other. It is also in the areas of social activities, of education, of employment and other pursuits, in the choice of our companions. The people in Samaria lived in poverty and repression because they sought to both fear the Lord and serve their graven images. We will not amount to much for God either, if we do not make a clearcut choice in our lives to serve the Lord and set aside the world.
Everything that we allow the world to take over in our lives is territory that is closed to God and to His service, and to any reward from Him. – Jim MacIntosh