“You shall have no other gods before me.” (Ex. 20:3)
What if we could just get this first commandment right all the time? Read that again… Would we work 80 hours a week? Would we abuse our bodies with junk food? Would we abuse people around us with harsh words? Would we neglect the people who need us most? Would we steal from our “neighbor”? Would we even covet our neighbor’s stuff?
Tim Keller says “Sin isn’t only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than on God.” When we elevate something lesser than god to a rival position above God, we are sinning… Ouch.
So, how’s that going for ya?
Me, too.
The beauty of the Christian life, though, is that we’re all in the same boat – we “kill and covet” because we don’t have/get what we want, because what we want can never be fulfilled finally and fully by the 7,000,000 page menu of this world’s offerings. Yet, despite this brutal fact of our reality, God loves us enough to sacrifice Himself for us in Christ. God went “all in” for us at the poker table of redemption (awkward metaphor?).
Be Encouraged
Today, you and I as followers of Christ can take comfort in the fact that God is a jealous God. Really? Yes! Perfect, holy, awesome, great, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful God is better for you and I than all the stuff we could work for, covet, steal, or attain in this world and He’s so committed to that, that He made it the first command, sent Christ to suffer and die for our sins, and sent the Holy Spirit to help us do all He designed for us to do.
By the Spirit, by the Spirit, by the Spirit… The first command is clearly a hurdle too high for any of us, yet God sent the Spirit to empower us to “do all things”. In a Genesis 3 world, none of us can truly expect to do this perfectly for any extended period of time. However, this is one of many voids the Spirit was sent to fill.
Bigger than that is the fact that our God is bigger than all of this. We were not created by and are not pursued, loved, and empowered by a bumbling wannabe superhero. It is not a wee, man made, gold statue that’s offering you a good grain harvest who sent his little brother to help you plow the fields and do a few odds and ends on your honey-do list. It is the King of Kings, the ha olam – Master of the Universe – who sent the Spirit of Truth to walk along side you through everything from the valley of the shadow of death to loving God without rivals.
Wow. Amen.
AP