The college
football fan in me never has any conflict.
Arkansas State never plays the University of Arkansas, so every Saturday
I can openly root for both to win. That’s
not always the case in pro football or the baseball playoffs, though. And those are the times that duplicitous part
of me that claims to love the Atlanta Braves AND the St. Louis Cardinals has to
pick a side. Same for the lying part of
me that says I love the Minnesota Vikings AND the New Orleans Saints. Especially THIS year as St. Louis and Atlanta
came down to the wire over home field advantage throughout the playoffs. I’m happy for St. Louis, but being honest
with myself…I was REALLY pulling for Atlanta.
Of course, as I go back and proofread this devotional to get it ready to
go out, they’re both down 2 games to 1 in their different series and on the
brink of elimination, and neither may make it to the next round – so there’s a
“chickens before they hatch” devotional in there somewhere. But when the rare instance comes up that
Minnesota plays New Orleans…it’s the one game a year that I really hope New
Orleans takes a loss. Regular season or
playoffs doesn’t matter…when it gets down to brass tacks (whatever the
entomology of that phrase…I’ll google it at some point), I’ll always pick
Atlanta and Minnesota as my favorites.
And surely you’ve
figured out the point by now…Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13, of course. No one
can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you
will be devoted to the one and despise the other. That is to say, at some point you will find
something on God’s throne in your heart…something…anything that’s NOT God. The typical translation of the end of both
verses reads “You cannot serve both God
and money.” But in truth, it’s not
just money. The original greek word is “μαμωνᾶς” – which
usually gets transliterated mammon…with the usual translation of “worldly
wealth”. But it’s actually the
comprehensive word used for every kind of valuable or material good. It’s not wealth as a collective unit like we
usually think of wealth. It’s
anything. So where this usually gets
looked at from a God vs Money or God vs Your Collection of Stuff, that’s not
really accurate either. It’s a simple
matter of You cannot serve both God and anything you have that’s NOT God.
For Abraham, his mammon was Isaac. For the Israelites it was a golden calf. At one point for David, it was Bathsheba. For Solomon in his later life, his mammon became
women. For me (among other things), it’s
the gluttony of not knowing when to say “enough” when I’m eating. It’s a struggle to turn away from the mammon. It burrows in like a tick in a dog’s ear. So I’m not saying it’s easy to get your
mammon evicted from God’s throne, I’m just saying it’s an absolute
necessity. Exodus 20:4,5 is where God is
laying down the Law for Moses in the form of the Ten Commandments…”The
Decalogue” if you like to use fancy words (like using Pentateuch for the first
five books of the Old Testament or duplicitous like I did earlier). But either way, that’s where God tells Moses
that He is a jealous God, and that man should not bow to anything – regardless
of what it looks like. Whether it looks
like something in the Heavens, or something on the Earth, or something in the
water. (And as a side note, I find it
ironic that we make golden crosses and plaster the “Jesus fish” on just about
everything. Not judging, just observing.) But whether it looks like a new car, a football
team, a spouse, a child…even if your mammon looks just like you, it doesn’t
matter. And there’s nothing wrong with
any of those things in and of themselves.
They’re only wrong if instead of keeping the car in the garage or the
football team on the field, you start putting them in God’s seat…and refuse to
ever let Him take it back.
So as the sports-filled month of October gets geared up,
and your team plays their team…or maybe your team plays your other team, Listen for the Whisper that tells
you that God should always be your favorite team. Whenever God competes with whatever other
team you root for – gluttony, pride, vanity, deceitfulness, dishonesty,
rudeness, vulgarity, complacency, or whatever yours is – that when comes down
to it, God needs to be to us what the Atlanta Braves are for me in baseball and
the Minnesota Vikings are for me in football.
Regardless of who God is competing against, we need to hope He
wins. It’s His throne, and we like to let
all sorts of other things sit in it. But
none of them belong. Like Goldilocks
trespassing in the home of the three bears, the throne isn’t made for those for
other things…and they’ll find the throne too hot or too cold, or too hard or
too soft. But for God, His throne is
just right. It’s His throne, and He
alone belongs on it. As humans, we’ll
always be tempted from time to time to place something else where God is
supposed to be in our lives. But we
can’t serve two masters…God knew that about us way back when He was giving us
the Ten Commandments, and even farther back when Abraham decided that maybe
Isaac belonged on God’s throne in his heart - and God knows it about us
today. So the question really boils down
to this – can you support the coupe that wants the rightful King on the throne,
or are you content to be complacent and support whatever “king” happens to be
sitting in God’s throne in your life at the moment? God’s told us that He’s a jealous God. Are you willing to test that over a football
team or a new car? Or can you accept
that God alone will sit on His throne, and let your only complacency come from
being content to bow before God’s throne?
~Dwayne
ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.nethttp://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com
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