‘Behold, the Lamb
of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
69th teaching
3.24.2013
“God’s Importance:
the Final Chapter”
Mystery
Question: What
is one thing you think about more often than anything else? (Do not answer, but
think about the question)
Project
Scriptura is no more! Until
I can figure out how to work Project Scriptura into Christology, it is over.
Review:
What was our subject
last week? What are some things which set God’s creativity apart from human
creativity? What does ex nihilo mean?
Is God an art lover? Can anyone remember the seven days of the creation account
and what happened on each day (remember mnemonic device)? What is Creativity?
What are three things involved in Creativity? What are God’s three arts, three
creative works seen in Scripture? Given that we’re made in the image of God,
are we all creative? What should we do with our creativity?
End of Review
It is with great sadness that I announce to you: tonight we
come to the end of an adventure. We have reached the end of our quest in
studying the attributes of God, a quest we began as a group on October 29th
back in 2012. At the time, it seemed like all of this material in Theology
Proper, all the wonder and all the majesty and all the discoveries of God’s
nature and character lay before us on a kind of infinite and unending plane.
And over all this time, I’ve learned some tremendous things about God and grown
in my knowledge of God. I feel like I know God more now than I did back in
2012. And I hope each of you who have been with us, patiently learning, all of
the way or some of the way, can feel just the same: that you know God more
today, what He is like and who He is, than you did in days past. This study has
been profoundly meaningful to me and I thank God for entrusting me with
teaching His Word.
Tonight’s study is entitled: “God’s Importance: the Final
Chapter”. Tonight we conclude our study of God’s attributes with one final
attribute. Theology Proper, the section of theology dealing with God’s nature
and character, has reached its finale. What can be said, then, in retrospect?
In recalling that we’ve only barely scratched the surface of knowing God
through months and months and months of study, what can be said? How can we
conclude all of this, the sheer scope of everything that could be said about
God and that still awaits to be learned? How can we summarize everything that
we’ve learned?
Surely words fail. Words cannot be enough to describe the
awe and the vastness of everything we’ve learned about God. Last night, my wife
and I were talking about music, having watched a documentary on the production
of pianos. In the documentary, three pianos were presented in the same room. A
pianist played a short piece at the first piano, then moved to the second
instrument and played the same piece of music, and then went to the third and
did the same thing. He played the same music at each piano, but the sound was
subtly different. Apparently, the three pianos were being shipped to different
parts of the world: Japan, America and Europe, where different subtleties in
the tone of the instruments would be appreciated based on where in the world
they were going. It was interesting to hear the host of the documentary attempt
to explain the differences in the tones of each instrument. Certainly they all
sounded beautiful, but how to put into words the subtle differences between
beauty and beauty?
And certainly, if you’re a music lover, you’ll know that
sometimes it can be heinously difficult to attempt to describe the way a certain
piece of music sounds. With music, sometimes words are not enough.
I feel exactly the same thing about theology, now having
gone through it. With God, words are not enough. How can we ever put into human
language the mysterious infinity of the Most High? Well, a good place to look
for the right words to describe what it is like to know God would be in God’s
own Word. What is it like to know God?
Turn to Philippians
3:1-11.
“Finally, my
brethren, rejoice in the Lord. For me to write the same things to you is not
tedious, but for you it is safe. Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware
of the mutilation! For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit,
rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh, though I also
might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have
confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock
of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; concerning the law, a
Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness
which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, these I have
counted loss for Christ.
“Yet indeed I
also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus
my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as
rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own
righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in
Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and
the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being
conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from
the dead.”
This is a very famous passage and I think if you’ve been a
Christian for some time you will have heard these words. But though we may be
familiar with what is being said, let’s not dismiss this.
What is Paul saying? He is saying that the most important
thing he has found is the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus: that is,
knowing God. He has discovered that knowing the Lord is more important than anything
else he could have, so much more important, in fact, that he considers
everything else, all the confidence in his flesh, his career, his privileged
birth, the moral life he built for himself, and anything else he could have in
this word… he considers all of it rubbish.
In Greek, the term used is stronger than just trash. Paul
uses the Greek word is skubalon. It
means “refuse, street filth, the excrement of animals”. What a statement! Paul
considers knowing God to be so important that it excels everything else, to the
point that everything is counted to him as waste, excrement, something that you’d
never think twice about, something you wouldn’t look at or touch, something
that stinks: poop, ladies and gentlemen.
The contrast couldn’t be greater. The comparison is between
something of incredibly precious value and waste that comes out of an animal’s
butt. But Paul can make such an incredible contrast, between the unspeakably
wonderful knowledge of God and the worthlessness of everything else, because he
knew God, he experienced God. The Christ showed up in the life of Saul of
Tarsus and blinded him, literally, with His glory. Paul heard the voice of God,
received the calling upon his life, and served Jesus ever since. Paul knew and
experienced God. For him, this contrast between the things of the world and the
knowledge of God was a very real contrast, knowing God was so valuable and
important to him.
And, guys, I wonder if we could live like that? I wonder if
this could be our life’s philosophy, our worldview, our way of looking at the
world? Could you count the things which vie for your attention outside of God
as refuse, as excrement, for the excellency of knowing Him? Is God that
important to us?
This is the conclusion of Theology Proper. This is the
inevitable challenge that lies before we can turn the final page. We must ask
ourselves: how important is God to me? As important as He was to Paul? As
important as a handful of other things in life? Or hardly so important at all?
Tonight shall serve as a gauge of our devotion. It is the
only way to finish off this study. This is the only way and either we choose to
put God first and foremost, or put him in the backseat with everything else we
keep in tow.
As Tozer so pointedly said, in a phrase which has become a
kind of theme for this study: “What comes into our minds when we think about
God is the most important thing about us?” And how important God is in our
thoughts will define our lives as either Christian disciples or wayward souls
playing with Christianity, with entertainment, with pleasure and with the cares
of this world.
So my encouragement and challenge to you is that you begin
to think about how important God is to you.
We have a few points before us:
1. Theology Proper Concluded
2. The Attributes of God
3. Why He Matters
4. A Servant of Two Masters
1.
Theology Proper Concluded
When we began Theology Proper all that time ago, we thought
about this section of study as sort of the heart of theology. Theology Proper,
to my mind, is just that: the center and the centerpiece of theology. If
theology were a crown, Theology Proper would be the largest and most brilliant
of its jewels right in its center.
A few things to remember about Theology Proper in passing:
A. Remember what Theology Proper is. Theology Proper is simply studying about
God Himself, the greatest possible subject of study in the world. Clearly,
there is no greater knowledge to be had. If God exists, even atheists admit
that this is important information. If God exists, then knowing Him would be
the most important thing to ever know. Theology Proper is the study of God and it
helps us to know Him through the descriptions of His attributes. God is too
vast to summarize in one statement. The word “God” hardly encompasses
everything to be known about him. That’s why we’ve been studying God’s
attributes, these separate statements and qualities, to know Him better. That’s
what Theology Proper is.
B. The correction of Theology Proper. We thought of Theology Proper as
necessary for proper theology. In other words, a correct view of God is the
foundation for every other sub-section in correct Christian teaching and
doctrine. If we’re to be properly taught Christians, we must be properly taught
Theology Proper. And since we’ve studied who God is, now we can differentiate
between truth and lies about Him, between the false teachings and heresies and
what the Bible actually says.
C. The goal of Theology Proper. Theology Proper aims to answer the
questions: Who is God? What is God like? “Is He angry, is He good, is He
loving, is He hateful, is He distant, is He near, is He powerful, is He weak, is
He kind, is He out there at all?” Theology Proper is the cure of confusion.
D. The necessity of Theology Proper. Plainly, we need a proper understanding
of God if we’re to become Christians at all and if we’re to live the Christian
life. The doubt, the confusion, the stress, the anxiety and the lack of
spiritual maturity we can all experience in some way stem from a lack of
knowing God more. So then, if we’re to be effective disciples of Christ, we
need to know who our Master is. Theology Proper is absolutely necessary for the
Christian life. Doesn’t mean every Christian has to go through a course in Theology Proper, since you might be
surprised how much of it comes out through ordinary Sunday morning sermons and
how much of it appears throughout the Bible, but clearly, we cannot be
followers of God if we don’t know who this God person is anyhow.
I knew this before this study began, but was reminded of
this fact while teaching through this course, that theology has kind of a bad
reputation. When we hear words like theology
proper, we might automatically think of cold religion, dead liturgy and
mean, crusty old men sitting all alone in their church cathedrals. Theology, I’ve
found, is often dismissed for being too intellectual, too strict, too much
against the heart and too much a limitation of the Spirit of God. But, friends,
don’t make this mistake. You need theology.
Imagine for a moment if mainstream Christianity got their
wish: no more hard-studying, no more tough-doctrines, no more long-words, no
more stone-cold theology. All hell would break loose. It would be chaos. Simply,
no one would know who God was or what He is like. It would be as if the Bible
itself had never been written and no Christian could ever seriously wish for that.
We don’t need the whole vibe of theology, this sense of
cold and dead religion over-concerned with Latin words and ancient phrases and
traditions and the teachings of men. We don’t need that.
But we do need theology. We need it desperately. In fact,
the church doesn’t need less
theology. It needs more of it, more Theology Proper. How could it not? How
could you say that the church needs to know less about God rather than more?
Just imagine, again, if more church-goers really knew who God was like, how
that would change the whole tone of some churches, the lives of those who
attend and the kind of teachings going out all over America and the world. The
church needs to know who God is and what He is like, as does the unbeliever.
Without solid, passionate, inspiring, biblically-based theology, the church
would live in an eternal Dark Age of myth and superstition.
That’s why I love this picture: veritas (truth) passing from heaven
through the mind and enflaming the heart. Heaven, mind and heart are each
engaged.
Allow me to read to you a portion of C.S. Lewis’ writings
in his book Mere Christianity. Here,
he makes the same point by coming at it in another way:
“Everyone has warned me not to tell you what I am going to
tell you... They all say ‘the ordinary reader does not want Theology; give him
plain practical religion.’ I have rejected their advice. I do not think the
ordinary reader is such a fool. Theology means ‘the science of God,’ and I
think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the
clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available. You are not
children: why should you be treated like children?
“In a way I quite understand why some people are put off by
Theology. I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old,
hard-bitten officer got up and said, ‘I've no use for all that stuff. But, mind
you, I'm a religious man too. I know there's a God. I've felt Him: out alone in
the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that's just why I don't
believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who's met
the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!’
“Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he
had probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned
from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning
from something real to something less real.
“In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic
from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will
be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves
to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is admittedly
only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In
the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have
found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of
experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while
yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different
experiences together.
“In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map
is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach,
your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going
to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.
“Now, Theology is like the map. Merely learning and
thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and
less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are
not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience
of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God, experiences compared with which any thrills or
pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and
very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the
map.
“You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been
real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere.
There is nothing to do about it In fact, that is just why a vague religion—all about feeling God in
nature, and so on—is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching
the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the
Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the
presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking
at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea
without a map.
“In other words, Theology is practical: especially now. In
the old days, when there was less education and discussion, perhaps it was
possible to get on with a very few simple ideas about God. But it is not so
now. Everyone reads, everyone hears things discussed. Consequently, if you do
not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It
will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones: bad,
muddled, out-of-date ideas. For a great many of the ideas about God which are
trotted out as novelties today, are simply the ones which real Theologians
tried centuries ago and rejected. To believe in the popular religion of modern
England is retrogression,
like believing the
earth is flat.”
Therefore, I don’t find that our time spent in Theology Proper
was time wasted. If we want to grow up as Christian men and women, we need to
get through the hard stuff. You can’t eat candy all your life and expect to grow
up healthy. You can’t survive on feel-good sermons and little catchy limericks and
inspirational quotes. You’ve got to dig in, bite into the meat, though it can
be tough and hard to chew. You’ll need it to mature.
As the writer of Hebrews said of his own audience: “For though by this time you ought to be
teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the
oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone
who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is
a child. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those
who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”
(Hebrews 5:12-14)
I can’t see into each of your lives. I can’t see how far
God has taken you along your Christian walk. But I hope that as we’ve gone
through Theology Proper that you’ve taken in the meat, that you’ve begun to
learn to chew on the harder things rather than just wanting the milk, the
basics.
In waving goodbye to Theology Proper, we look forward to
the fruit of what we’ve learned: growing up and becoming teachers, each one of
us, no longer simply learning but able to instruct others in the Word of God. I
hope that this is practically what we’ve received through this study: growth,
not only in knowing God, but also in our own abilities.
Know and experience God, and also use the map!
2.
The Attributes of God
As you might have guessed, the Importance of God isn’t one
of the traditional attributes of God. It isn’t traditionally listed with the
other attributes on any great lists from the theologians and creeds of the
past. But we’re treating it as an attribute of God for the sake of this study.
And really, coming in last, it fits into the perfect spot.
Everything that we’ve learned about God as summarized by these several
statements about Him identified as His attributes show us that He is incredibly
important, the most important Being
in existence, in fact. No other Being has this perfect blend of qualities, a
perfect metaphysical nature and a perfect moral character.
We can consider God’s Importance, then, to be the sum result
of all of His attributes. Considering all of them, we recognize God’s absolute
significance above all other beings.
(See bookmark: God’s Attributes)
You’ll remember that there are several attributes we can
share with God. These are the communicable attributes, ones which both God and
humanity possess. For example: love, justice, creativity, grace, wisdom,
sovereignty are some attributes which both God and people share. But obviously,
God possesses wisdom and sovereignty and love and all in a purer and perfect
way in comparison to the qualities of a human being.
But then, there are attributes of God which are known as
non-communicable, meaning they cannot be shared with fleshly, fallen human
beings. Some of these include: infinity, omnipotence, transcendence, Aseity,
impeccability, luminosity and pure actuality. In these, God stands alone and
unique. We certainly aren’t self-sufficient or hidden in light or transcendent above
the universe or all-powerful. On the flip side, we as humans are quite weak,
quite ordinary and quite dependent on our surroundings.
All of these attributes point God out to be the only One of
His kind. He resides in a classification of life all His own. Therefore, He is
immensely important, since He is so rare, so glorious, so powerful, so loving
and perfect. Importance is the sum result of all of His attributes. Add that
one to all the traditional lists of theology.
3.
Why He Matters
Now last week I had asked you to find your verses for God’s
Importance. I had asked you to show me, like you might show anyone, like an
unbeliever, why God is important to you. With all of the Project Scripturas we’ve
done in the past, this one is perhaps the most vital.
If we cannot show to others why we think God is important
then why should unbelievers consider Him to be such a big, screaming deal at
all? Thus said, what did you come up with?
There are too many ways in which God is important to
measure. We couldn’t hope to list them all. Surely God is important for life
itself, for the existence of our surroundings, for salvation, for peace, for
hope, for science, for true religion, for fellowship with others, for the
church as its foundation.
But we have to be able to show to others, not merely with
words, but with our lives why God matters, and not only why He matters, but why
He matters to you personally. Hear
me, no revival, no sinner will crawl to the Lord for mercy because of the
witness of an indifferent and uncaring Christian, one who all but shows with
their life that God gets a few hours on Sunday but no other part of themselves.
That involves prioritizing our lives so that God occupies
the highest position, where He rightly belongs. God is to be our first
consideration. We are to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
Again comes the challenge of this final study: how important
is God to you? Realize that the way you answer that question might determine
the eternal fate of your unsaved family member, friend or coworker who
desperately needs the light of the world through your Christian witness. Is that heavy?
This is heavy.
God matters. And unless we can show that to a dying world than it will just
keep on dying. There is no splitting hairs or mincing words here.
I don’t know how much depends upon your witness, but tell
me, would you want to play around with that idea, would you want to see how
little witness you can get away with and risk
losing a human soul to hellfire forever? You simply don’t know.
And therefore, the matter of God’s Importance is perhaps
the most important thing we can live out in demonstration to an unbelieving
world that’s swiftly caving in under the weight of its depravity. Unknown to
us, our preoccupation with our own comforts, with entertainment, movies, games,
our own friends, our own responsibilities towards our own careers even,
anything else that struggles to grab our attentions… these are the things which
could distract us from the real reason we’re here, from our true purpose in
life. One reason why Christians might find themselves ineffective is because we’re
distracted and we demonstrate that all sorts of things are more important to us
than God, when even the world realizes that if God is out there, that’s
immensely important. It needs to be important to us, too.
If we are not the light of the world, who will be?
4.
A Servant of Two Masters
Look at Matthew 6:24,
“No one 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 [that is, riches].”
This final attribute of God, His Importance, leads us neatly
into the topic of our devotion. We’re wired as human beings in such a way that
we gravitate toward the things we find important. We automatically think about
important things, or things we think
are important things, more often than unimportant things.
Could you imagine how weird it would be if we didn’t think
about the important things? There’d be no celebrities and no magazines and
paparazzis making bank off of the public belief in their importance. There’d be
people dying all over the place, since we’d hardly ever think of food or drink,
since those are important and essential for life. We’d never think about
marriage or relationships. We’d neglect our families. We’d spurn friendship. We’d
never go to the doctor or take care of our health. We wouldn’t buy homes or
clothes or tools. We wouldn’t take the time to learn anything.
In short, the world would be a radically different place if
we didn’t automatically think about what we deem important, if we didn’t focus
on the important rather than the unimportant. But then the real question lies
in what we find to be important.
And that’s easy to answer. Mentally survey your life from
this past week. What did you think about the most? If you dreamt, what did you
dream about the most? Where did you go the most? What did you spend time doing
the most? Who did you spend time with the most? What did you spend your
hard-earned money on the most? What kind of books did you read, movies did you
watch, conversations did you have? What kind of feelings did you raise up in your
heart?
How you answer those questions gives you a pretty good idea
of what is important to you. And if you’re like me, you find that you have a
lot to learn about making God the
important priority in your life.
But be warned, Jesus said you cannot serve two masters. Not
with your hands, not with your work, not with your life and not with your
thoughts or your heart.
Here’s another question: what is one of the most prevalent
sins in the Bible, one that appears in every section of Scripture, in every
age, almost in every book?
You might say “pride” or “unbelief”. What about idolatry?
When you think about it, idolatry is one of the most widely
occurring sins in the history recorded in the Bible. There’s idolatry from
Genesis, worship of the Canaanite gods, all the way to the end in Revelation,
where they’ll worship Antichrist as a god. And what’s more, we’re talking about
God’s Importance and our devotion to Him.
What’s the opposite of being devoted to God beside idolatry?
Idolatry, the worship of idols, that is the devotion to any little created
thing besides for the Creator Himself, is the opposite of devotion to the Lord.
Given the questions we asked ourselves just now, about how we used our time,
money and thoughts last week, do we recognize any idols in our lives?
Here at the final chapter of Theology Proper, with the
great glory of the Majesty on high before us in recent memory, can we admit to
ourselves that we have done all but place Him in His rightful position as Lord
and Master in our lives, that we’ve in fact given that position of devotion to
lesser things, things which Paul called excrement in light of the excellence of
knowing Christ?
God heal us. God forgive us. May He remove from our lives,
from the worship of our thoughts, all the misguided affections and misplaced
investments.
The time has come. There’s no better time than at the end,
having seen and studied all of God’s glories, to make your decision. You may
have asked God to be your Lord and Savior in a prayer you prayed many years
ago, in the heat of some moment you may have forgotten, but in time perhaps you’ve
usurped the throne of God in your heart and set up in His place something else:
career, girlfriend, boyfriend, wealth, hopes for the future, being liked,
entertainment, family, anything… even yourself.
Jesus said “If anyone
comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers
and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”
You know what He’s saying, not that we must literally hate everyone, but that our love and
pursuit of our Lord must be of such importance to us that in comparison
everything else seems like hatred, seems like excrement, as Paul said.
You cannot serve two masters. Either the Lord occupies the
most important position in your life, or something else does. But the time has
come to quit playing games with God. He is not mocked, the Bible says. We can’t
dabble in sins and depravity, fool around with the cares of the world, play
around with idols in our lives and expect God to just wait around until we’re
ready for Him again. The time to be a disciple is now.
This is urgent.
I remember when our pastor was teaching through I Kings 19. There, the prophet Elijah
calls upon his predecessor Elisha to come and follow him, to be the next
prophet in his place.
We read in I Kings
19:19-21, “So he departed from there,
and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen
before him, and he was with the twelfth. Then Elijah passed by him and threw
his mantle on him. And he left the oxen and ran after Elijah, and said, ‘Please
let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.’ And [Elijah] said to him, ‘Go back again, for what have I
done to you?’ So Elisha turned back from him, and took a yoke of oxen and
slaughtered them and boiled their flesh, using the oxen’s equipment, and gave
it to the people, and they ate. Then he arose and followed Elijah, and become
his servant.”
How important was it to become the next prophet of Israel,
the man who would deliver the messages of God to the people who were turning
against him, the man who would replace Elijah? Pretty important.
Now look at Luke
9:57-62, “Now it happened as they
journeyed on the road, that someone said to [Jesus], ‘Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes
have holes and birds of the air nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay
His head.’ Then [Jesus] said to
another, ‘Follow Me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’
Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the
kingdom of God.’ And another also said, ‘Lord, I will follow You, but let me
first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘No
one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom
of God.”
Jesus had a lot of hard sayings and these are some of the
hardest, but you see the parallel between the call of Elijah’s disciple and the
call of Christ’s disciples? No doubt Jesus had this comparison in mind.
Elijah was calling Elisha to an extremely important job,
the next prophet of Israel, but he allowed Elisha to go back and bid farewell
to his family and prepare a feast for his friends. Jesus, on the other hand, was
calling disciples to a far greater cause, to follow not a prophet, but to
follow the Lamb of God Himself. And Jesus did not allow anyone to place greater
priority upon anything else before His call to discipleship.
That shows us the immense contrast of importance. It was
important to become a prophet in Elijah’s day. But it is more important to
become a disciple of Christ in our day. Yet we cannot put anything before that
call upon our lives. Anything else is idolatry, putting something in the place
of God and following after that thing instead.
Guys, I don’t expect we shall learn this in one night, nor
even in the months that we’ve taken to study Theology Proper. It might take our
entire lives to put God first in everything. But that’s no reason not to aim
for it. And what’s more, this is a daily and a moment by moment decision you’ll
have to make, again and again, whether you put God first or something else
first.
At the conclusion of Theology Proper: Here is your King!
May you continue to grow in your knowledge and love for
Christ, and discover the sheer excellence of knowing God.
-norton
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