Both

 

Luke 16:13 “No servant 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. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

 

The Greek word for mammon is “Mamōnas”, which translates as riches; wealth; or the god, which you treasure; an idol. The old saying goes, “You cannot have it both ways.” Yet, how many say that they want God plus some other self-gratifying temptation that they love. The Greek word for “idol” is “Eidolon” meaning a false god; anything on which we set our affections more than God; that to which we indulge an excessive and sinful attachment. An idol is anything which usurps the place of God in the hearts of his rational creatures; anything that comes between your face and God’s.

 

In Exodus 20:1-6 God spoke all these words, saying: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. “You shall have no other gods before Me. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

 

The Ten Commandments are known as the “Decalogue”. The statements of God quoted to Moses at Mt. Sinai in Exodus 20:1-17 and confirmed in Deuteronomy 5:6–21 are entitled "the ten words, or utterances" of God (Deca or Deka in Greek means “ten” and Logue means “discourse, or spoken word” – “Logos” means “Word of God”). By way of eminence, idolatry is a precept of the decalogue, or moral law, written on tables of stone, at Mount Sinai; the first of the ten commandments. Pastor Kennedy explains that the moral laws, reflect the eternal, holy, and unchangeable nature of God. All the moral laws are summed up in the Ten Commandments. God’s moral laws have never passed away and will never pass away. We must obey them always. We need the moral laws because they draw people to Christ. They restrain wicked people. They smash our pride and drive us to our knees. They guide us in the way we should live. In considering the moral laws, people make two basic errors. Some people believe they can save themselves by keeping the laws. Others believe just the opposite—that if they are saved, they don’t have to keep the moral laws. But God wants to create a perfect kingdom of righteousness where, in joyful and willing obedience, men and women yield themselves gladly to God’s eternal law because of their love for and gratitude to their Savior and Lord.

 

The Ten Commandments of God are not suggestions. A command of God is a mandate; an order or injunction given by sovereign authority for our good and well-being by our loving Creator, Father God. Every kingdom has a king over the domain. The Kingdom of Heaven is no exception. A king is defined as the chief or sovereign of a nation; a man invested with supreme authority over a nation, tribe or country; a monarch. Kings are absolute monarchs with sovereign dominion over their domain. The Creator has sovereign dominion over His creation in Heaven and the Universe. His holy and sovereign Word is subject to obedience by His subjects; his creatures of His creation. To disobey and defy a Commandment of the King is a rebellion deserving castigation. The devil’s lie is that we can be like God. That we should doubt God, so that we can have bothGod and our selfish heart’s desires (Mammon, whatever we treasure, idols), opening the door to sin and death. 

 

1 John 5:19-21 “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” Amen.

 

In Christ, Brian