Questions for Littles: What should our conduct be without? What should we be instead? With what should we be content? Whose speech is a reason for us to be content? What has He said? When will the Lord leave us? What else will the Lord never do?From the Scripture for this week’s sermon, we learned how to love our brothers, love outsiders, love the sufferers, and love our wives.
Interestingly, the solution was something NOT to love—silver! Of course, the verb for love-silver (compare to love-brother and love-stranger from vv1-2) had come to mean any kind of covetousness: an inordinate love of things.
Covetousness is such a danger. If the poor think that they would stop thinking about wealth so much if they would just become wealthy, then they have missed the point of this verse. The problem is in what the heart loves. And the wealthy are just as susceptible to this—even more. Remember the rich young ruler?
The essence of love is giving OF oneself. For God so loved the world… that He gave His only begotten Son. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He love us… and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Well, it’s very difficult to give of ourselves if we are obsessed with getting for ourselves. But this is exactly the point at which our verse meets us. God Himself has loved us. God has given Himself to us. God has promised never to take Himself from us. He has loved us.
Truly, we love, because He first loved us!
Do we desire to be the kind of brother-loving, stranger-loving, sufferr-loving, spouse-loving people that we are commanded to be? Let us begin by embracing the love of God for us. Let us begin by counting it worth more to have Him than it would be to have everything and everyone else.
This is how God resolved Asaph’s covetousness (Ps 73), and it will spare us too!
In what daily and weekly exercises do you embrace God’s gift of Himself to you?Suggested Songs: ARP73C “Christian Unity” or TPH73C “In Sweet Communion”
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