“You shall have no other gods before me.” –Exodus 20:3 (Write it down on a 3×5 card)
The first commandment of the 10 is pretty simple, pretty straight forward, and extremely important and profound. The entire purpose of scripture, the entire purpose of Christianity, the entire purpose of our lives is to give glory to God! Anytime someone or something gets more glory than the one true God in our lives, that thing or that person becomes our god! Our minds may automatically jump to bad things, but a god can be and often times is a good things as well: Our jobs, our kids, our spouses, our exercise routine (distance running, at times, unfortunately has been my God), our homes, our golf game. What do you focus on most? That is your god. Do you need to replace your God with the one true God?
“You shall have NO OTHER gods before me.” –Exodus 20:3
Yesterday I set some goals for myself, you can read about it here. One of them was to memorize 100 scriptures every Adventist should know. So I want to invite you to memorize with me. Every few days I will place on my blog our text we are going to memorize. I also at that time will add a little commentary on the text. Maybe if you read these in the morning this can be added to your devotional time. Either way I hope you will join me and check back regularly! Maybe to help you memorize get a packet of 3 x 5 cards and write the scriptures on them, keep them with you and look at them and recite them throughout the day.
We are going to start today with Exodus 20: 1, 2 and I am going to be using the New International Version:
Verse 1: And God spoke all these words:
Verse 2: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
Personal Commentary:
These two verses are the prelude, the intro into the 10 Commandments that God carved into stone with His own hand. They are words that are directly from God, they aren’t the interpretation of man, they are not man’s perspective, the Bible tells us that “God spoke all these words.” That to me it seems would make them quite important! And in verse 2 we see the basis by which the children of Israel were to keep the law. They were to keep the law, because they were delivered by God from slavery. This text really highlights the basis for all obedience, including why we should continue to obey, because we have been delivered! Not like the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, but from sin, we’ve been delivered from the condemnation of the law by Jesus, therefore we should obey. I like how God reminds His people that He already delivered them and then asks them to keep the commandments. Our God’s acts of grace ALWAYS precede our response, our actions!
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
–Romans 5:8
The act of grace came before our actions of repentance, before our actions of obedience, before our actions of love. But then we are to respond in love which is obedience.
” “If you love me, keep my commands.”
–John 14:15
If you ever run into someone that tries to discourage your obedience by telling you not to be a “legalist” because it is all about love. Remind them that love and obedience cannot be separated! We obey because we love, we love because we are delivered, we are delivered because God loves us!
Memorize this scripture and remember the commandments are a response to a mighty act of GRACE!
So I think I am finally ready to talk about some of my goals for 2011. ALL of us should set goals! Why?
What to know when you are setting goals: They should be SMART!
So here are some of my goals for 2011:
Spiritual:
Familial:
Physical:
Professional:
Personal Growth and Development:
Social:
I pray all of you will think about your year and set some goals, I believe that you will find that you can achieve more than you ever thought possible if you will just set goals, even if you write them down and never look at them again you are stil almost guaranteed to accomplish more than if you had written nothing down.
One final note on goals: Notice above everything starts with “I will” that is simply because that is the easiest way to state something in the positive. The reality is that “Only God can” & “Only God will”. You see “I can” on my own accomplish several of the tasks above on my own, but they will be far short of bringing God glory if “I do” instead of “Jesus doing things through me and in me…” And ultimately I don’t want to take away any more from the Glory of God in my life than I already have thus far. So pray for me as I pray for you!
Seth Godin wrote on his blog the other day,
I have deeds. ”Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder. You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offer ed his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.” –James 2:17-26
Abraham and Rahab didn’t just give lip service to faith in God, they allowed that faith to turn their world upside down and challenge them in ways they never thought imaginable. Is your faith all about words? Or are you allowing that faith to turn your world upside down? To paraphrase Seth Godin from a church and Christian perspective, “Let us do more than adopt the words of Jesus, let us adopt the change He has for our lives as well!”
While my overall experience at Saddleback was very positive and the Lord blessed my personal worship experience, there were three things I would change. Two I feel are essential to worship and one is just a personal preference.
Let us start with my personal preference just to get it out of the way: The dress is so casual at Saddleback that if I wore a suit there I would definitely feel “out of place.” Why would I change this? Because I like to wear a suit! Christina (my wife) on the other hand loved being able to dress down, and asked me if I knew how hard it was to try and corral kids in a dress? Dresses aren’t my thing, so I had to admit I do not understand that challenge.
Okay now for the other two items. There was only one prayer in the service. It was Pastor Rick Warren’s closing prayer. I didn’t like this, I believe if we say that prayer is important as believers and even Pastor Rick mentioned the power of prayer in order to change in his sermon, then we have to model it before our people and place great emphasis on it! Maybe they do this at other times, but it is not evident in their worship service. On a side note though, off of their patio (outdoor foyer) they do have a prayer garden and there are people that will pray with individuals and for individuals desiring prayer after the service. I would still like to see a greater emphasis in the worship service.
The other item that I didn’t like is that giving was never even mentioned in the worship service and if I hadn’t seen the plate coming I would not have even known they were collecting offering. Giving is an integral act of worship and again I believe this should be clearly affirmed in a worship service.
Those are the negatives from our time at Saddleback all the rest was great! Including a wonderful message on Biblical change from Romans 12:1-12.
I hope you have enjoyed the Saddleback Observations blogs.