1 - Introduction - Living like a real Christian Heart - Three Ways to Live | Page 4

Monday Ezekiel 14 v 1 – 11 In the beginning, human beings were made to (1) worship and serve God, and then (2) to rule over all created things in God’s name (Genesis1 v 26–28). Instead, we fell into sin. When Paul sums up the fall of humanity into sin, he does so by describing it in terms of idolatry. He says we refused to give God glory (i.e., to make him the most important thing) and instead chose certain parts of creation to glorify in his stead: “[They] exchanged the glory of the immortal God…and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Romans 1 v 23–25). In short, we reversed the originally intended order. Human beings came to (1) worship and serve created things, and therefore (2) the created things came to rule over them. The Ten Commandments’ first two and most basic laws are against idolatry. The first commandment prohibits worshiping other gods; the second commandment prohibits worshiping God idolatrously, as we want him to be. After God’s code of covenant behaviour is given in Exodus 20–23, there is a summary warning against making a covenant with other gods (Exodus 23 v 24) because they “snare” you (Exodus 23 v 33). We will either worship God, or we will worship some created thing (an idol). Every human personality, every human community, and every human thought-form will be based on some ultimate concern or some ultimate allegiance to something. Martin Luther put it like this: “All those who do not at all times trust God and do not in all their works or sufferings, life and death, trust in His favour, grace and good-will, but seek His favour in other things or in themselves, do not keep this [First] Commandment, and practise real idolatry, even if they were to do the works of all the other Commandments, and in addition had all the prayers, fasting, obedience, patience, chastity, and innocence of all the saints combined. For the chief work is not present, without which all the others are nothing but mere sham, show and pretence.”