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A lesson concerning covetousness.
v. 13. 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.
v. 14. And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things; and they derided Him.
v. 15. And He said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.
v. 16. The Law and the prophets were until John; since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.
v. 17. And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the Law to fail.
v. 18. "Whosoever putteth away his wife and marrieth another committeth adultery; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.
It is impossible for a servant to be in the service of, and to render proper service to, two different masters. See Mat_6:24. The one will have his affection and respect, and therefore the service which, flows out of these feelings; the other will have his dislike, if not his outright hatred. And so he cannot serve the interests of both. If anyone serves mammon, attaches his heart to his money, to his wealth, if he has only the object of satisfying his own desires, he cannot at the same time serve the Lord. His heart will be where his supposed treasure is. This last saying angered the Pharisees, who were present and had heard the parable. They were lovers of money, they were covetous. And since they felt the sting of the words, they tried to turn the tables on the Lord, in a childish way, by turning up their noses at Him, by sneering and deriding Him. This behavior of the Pharisees causes Jesus to flay their self-righteousness, and to remind them of some other shortcomings and vices which were found in their midst. They justified themselves before men, they lived their lives so as to conform with the outward forms of holiness before men, who could not look into their hearts to discover the hidden meanness. But God looked beyond the veneer of outward righteousness, He knew their hearts in all their filthiness. Before men they may be highly respected, but before the Lord they and their entire behavior were an abomination. And it is true in general that conventional moral statements are the opposite of real truth; the hypocrisies of the so-called high society in many cases are such as to make the behavior of the lowest class of people that are sincere in speech and action seem golden by contrast. But even here the searching mercy of the Lord is apparent. For He tells the Pharisees that the Law and the Prophets were in power until John, who stands on the threshold between the Old and the New Testaments. But beginning with John, and since his coming, the glorious preaching of the kingdom of God, as revealed in Jesus the Christ, had gone forth, and every one that became interested at all was so completely overcome with the glories revealed that he pressed forward with might and took it by force. See Mat_11:12-13. The believer is obliged to battle with, and to overcome, all his own natural desires and lusts, and to deny them. world with all its gifts and allurements in order to enter into the Kingdom. But this does not imply that the Law has been abrogated. The situation rather is this, that it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away,—and heaven and earth will actually be destroyed,—before so much as one tittle, a single diacritical mark of the Hebrew script, falls to the ground. See Mat_5:17-48; Mat_6:1-34; Mat_7:1-29; Mat_8:1-34; Mat_9:1-38; Mat_10:1-42; Mat_11:1-30; Mat_12:1-50; Mat_13:1-58; Mat_14:1-36; Mat_15:1-39; Mat_16:1-28; Mat_17:1-27; Mat_18:1-32. Therefore also the Seventh Commandment with its judgment upon covetousness would continue in force. And no less should the Pharisees remember the Sixth Commandment, concerning which there was far too much license in their midst. What Jesus had said at other times He here repeated with emphasis. The wanton dissolution of the marriage-tie by which a man put away his wife for almost any reason that he chose to name, simply by giving her a bill of divorcement, and then entered into a union with some other woman, is adultery before God. And the union with a woman that has been thus put away by her husband without a cause that God acknowledges is again adultery. God will not be mocked with the lax marriage and divorce of these latter days. The state may, for the sake of expediency, permit many things to the children of the world which God condemns unequivocally; but that fact does not and cannot influence a Christian nor cause him to deviate one inch from the will of God as revealed in the Law.