Find your smooth
stones. Polish them,
use them frequently
and you, too, will
find that the battles
you fight you will no
longer fight alone, for
the battle is the Lord’s.
but hell, then you can close the door to
that line of thinking.
As I see it, though, we often leave that
line of thinking open because while we’ve
heard the teaching, we haven’t mastered
it. That’s because we’re more interested
in learning the 10,000 other punches
and practicing them once. It seems that’s
what’s been happening for centuries. The
Children of Israel lived with lots of rules.
There were 613 rules given in the five
books of Moses. There were laws on:
• Sacrifices, ordination of the priests
• Tabernacle consecration, alien fire, dietary laws
• Childbirth, skin disease, clothing
• Skin disease, infected houses, genital discharges
• Yom Kippur, centralized offerings, sexual practices
• Holiness, penalties for transgressions
• Rules for priests, holy days, lights and bread, a blasphemer
• Sabbatical year, debt servitude limited
• Blessings and curses, payment of vows
In the New Testament we can read all about how the Pharisees were still
intent on enforcing all these rules. But in the end, what was it that the Israelites
really got in trouble over? It wasn’t failure to take their moldy garments to
the priests (see Leviticus 13:47-59), but rather it was a failure to master the
first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before My face.” Pretty
simple, right? If they had mastered the first commandment, the Philistines
would never have been an issue later on.
For us we might think we’ve got this commandment mastered because,
after all, how many of you have graven images in your homes that you bow
down to? I know I don’t. Can’t say that I ever have had a problem with that
one. However, it isn’t just about having physical idols that we worship. Mastery
is not having any gods before Him. You know, the ones like, “I wish I was
that famous.” Or putting all our efforts into being the “greatest” at something
without considering how we are treating people along the way. When we treat
others poorly, we are putting something else up as our god, and having other
gods before the Lord.
The Israelites failed at mastering this most basic commandment. While
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