One of my favorite theologians, Theodor Seuss Geisel, known for his works such as Horton Hears a Who, Green Eggs and Ham, and The Cat in the Hat, once wrote a story about a character named Zoad. It goes like this…
Did I ever tell you about the young Zoad,
Who came to a sign at the fork of the road?
He looked one way and the other way too.
The Zoad had to make up his mind what to do.
Well, the Zoad scratched his head, and his chin, and his pants.
And he said to himself, “I’ll be taking a chance
If I go to Place One, that place may be hot,
So how will I know if I like it or not.
On the other hand, though, I’ll feel such a fool
If I go to Place Two and find it’s too cool.
In that case I may catch a chill and turn blue,
So Place One may be best and not Place Two.
Play safe,” cried the Zoad, “I’ll play safe, I’m no dunce.
I’ll simply start off to both places at once.”
And that’s how the Zoad who would not take a chance
Went no place at all with a split in his pants.
That describes a lot of people in their relationship with God. They’re not really sure that walking His way is the best, so they try to walk down two roads at once. Sure, they’re willing to give God a try, but just in case He doesn’t work out, they want to have something else to fall back on.
Like the old Norwegian Christians, they put their pagan gods on the outside of their stavkirks, just in case the Christian God they worshipped on the inside didn’t work out.
Today, some try to center their lives on God AND making money. Some try to center their lives on God AND their family. Some try to center their lives on God AND the approval of men. But in the end, it gets them nowhere with a big split in their pants.
You must make a choice, my friends. Joshua challenged the people of his day, “Choose this day whom you will serve, (Joshua 24:15). Elijah questioned the people of his day, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him” (1 Kings 18:21). And Jesus made it very clear: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24). You must choose which God you will serve, because the true God will have no rivals to the throne of our hearts.
But somebody asks, “Why should I choose to serve God? Why should I choose to center my life solely on the LORD? Why should I worship only Him?” Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Exodus 20, Exodus 20, where God gives you three good reasons why you should choose to live for Him and only Him.
Exodus 20:1-3 And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me. (ESV)
Literally, “You shall have no other gods in my face.” It is an affront to God, to try to serve Him and something else at the same time. It is He, and He alone, that you should serve, and that’s because 1st of all…
HE IS THE LORD.
He is YHWH, the great “I AM,” the Self-Existent One. He himself is life, dependent on no one or nothing else. He is the fountain of all being and all power.
In Exodus 3, that’s how God identified Himself to Moses. Just a few months earlier, Moses wasn’t so sure about leading God’s people out of Egypt. He was afraid they wouldn’t listen to him, so God says to Moses, “Just tell them my name: I AM WHO I AM. Tell them I AM has sent me to you. Tell them the LORD, YHWH, the God of your fathers has sent me to you.”
In God’s mind, that was reason enough for His people to listen to Him, for how can anyone refuse the author of their very existence, the ground of their very being, and the source of their very life. And yet, people do it all the time.
Recently, Pastor and author J.R. Vassar came across a scene, which he described as heartbreaking. He was ministering in in Myanmar (Burma) and walking through a large Buddhist temple, where he saw a large number of people, very poor and desperate, bowing down to a large golden Buddha. They were stuffing what seemed to be the last of their money into the treasury box and kneeling in prayer, hoping to secure a blessing from the Buddha.
On the other side of the large golden idol, scaffolding had been built. The Buddha had begun to deteriorate, and a group of workers were diligently repairing the broken Buddha. These were broken people bowing down to a broken Buddha asking the broken Buddha to fix their broken lives while someone else fixed the broken Buddha. (J. R. Vassar, Glory Hunger: God, the Gospel, and Our Quest for Something More, Crossway, 2014, pp. 35-36; www.PreahingToday.com)
How sad! But that is no different than broken people in our country, who look to other broken people to fix their broken lives. It can only leave your soul empty. On the other hand, when you look to the Lord, the great I AM, the source of your very life, then and only then do you find true satisfaction.
All other gods will fail you. Your money is of no comfort when you’re lying in a hospital bed, dying of cancer. Your approval rating means nothing when you’ve failed miserably. And even your friends may abandon or betray you when things get too hard for them.
But God, the LORD, YHWH, He will never fail you. He is the Great I AM. He is everything you need whenever you need it. That’s reason enough to live for Him, and only Him. It’s because of WHO He is.
But if that’s not reason enough to serve only Him, then God gives you a second reason. And that’s because of WHO’S He is. That’s because He is not only the LORD…
HE IS THE LORD, “YOUR GOD.”
The Lord is YOUR God by his choice and yours. You are in a covenant relationship with the Lord through faith in his Son. You see, God is not only Life; He is Love. And He has chosen to be in relationship with you. He has chosen to be YOUR God!
I like the way Brent Curtis and John Eldredge describe God’s heart in their book, The Sacred Romance.
“Have you ever had to literally turn a lover over to a mortal enemy to allow her to find out for herself what his intentions toward her really were?
“Have you ever had to lie in bed knowing she was believing his lies and [being intimate] with him every night?
“Have you ever sat helplessly by in a parking lot, while your enemy and his friends took turns [taking advantage of] your lover even as you sat nearby, unable to win her heart enough so she would trust you to rescue her?
“Have you ever called this one you had loved for so long… and asked her if she was ready to come back to you, only to have her say her heart was still captured by your enemy?
“Have you ever watched your lover's beauty slowly diminish and fade in a haze of alcohol, drugs, occult practices, and infant sacrifice until she is no longer recognizable in body or soul?
“Have you ever loved one so much that you even send your only son to talk with her about your love for her, knowing that she will kill him?
“All this and more God has endured because of his refusal to stop loving us.” (Brent Curtis and John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance, Thomas Nelson, 1997, p. 106)
That’s the kind of God our LORD is. Only a fool could say “no” to such a God.
Several years ago, pastor and author, Stu Weber, talked about one of his sons in the Leadership journal. He wrote:
“My youngest son is the third of three boys. The first two are high-powered; the third is not any less high-powered, but he's the third out of three. By the time you've had a brother who's All-Conference this and another brother who's All-Conference that, there's not much left for you to do.
“As a father,” Stu Weber said, “I worried about our caboose. He is the most sensitive of the three. To encourage him, I spent a lot of time with him in the outdoors—camping, hunting, fishing. Anybody who has spent time in the outdoors knows that a pocketknife is essential gear—the man with the best blade gets the job done. So, whenever you're setting up camp, you're always looking for the knife.”
Weber said, “My son Ryan had a pocketknife that became his identity.” His older brothers always had to ask him to use the knife as they were setting up camp. That became his status in the tribe. He was the man with the blade.”
Stu said, “My birthday came around one year, and my family was planning a party for me.” Earlier in the afternoon Ryan walked into Stu’s office at home where Stu was studying. At first Stu didn't hear him; he felt him—he could sense his presence—and he turned around.
Ryan had chosen this moment, because he wanted to give his father a birthday present, but not at the birthday party. Ryan wanted it to be just him and his dad. Stu said, “He handed me a present, and I opened it—it was his knife.” (Stu Weber, “What It Takes to Reach Men,” Leadership, Fall 1994, p.128)
That’s the response of love. Your Heavenly Father loved you so much, there’s nothing else you would rather do than give your identity back to Him; there’s nothing else you would rather do than lose yourself in His love.
For many people, their identity is their work. Their identity is their families, or their status. But God wants you to find your identity in Him, because He loves you so much.
Please, don’t waver any longer between two gods. Choose to serve the Lord, and only Him, 1st of all, because of WHO He is – He is the LORD. Choose to serve the Lord, and only Him, 2ndly, because of WHO’S He is – He is YOUR God. Finally, choose to serve the Lord, and only Him, because of WHAT He’s done…)
HE HAS SET YOU FREE!
He has brought you out of slavery. He has taken you out of bondage. You see, God is life; God is love; & God is our liberator!
Verse 2 says, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
For 400 years, the children of Israel were slaves in Egypt. Then in one night, God miraculously set them free.
The Egyptians couldn’t wait to get rid of them after their firstborn were slain. They even gave the Israelites a lot of gold and silver to hurry them on their way. Then, when the Egyptians had a change of heart, God parted the Red Sea, so the Israelites could cross on dry ground. When the Egyptian army followed, God closed the sea over top of them, and Israel never saw their captors again.
It was a glorious deliverance, not unlike what God did for us when we trusted Christ as our Savior. We were in bondage to sin and Satan, but God set us free from that bondage through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross. Satan no longer has any power over us, and we are free to be all that God made us to be.
There is an old legend that Abraham Lincoln went down to the slave block to buy a slave girl. As she looked at the white man bidding on her, she figured he was another white man going to buy her and then abuse her. He won the bid, and as he was walking away with his property, he said, “Young lady, you are free.”
She said, “What does that mean?”
“It means you are free.”
“Does that mean,” she said, “that I can say whatever I want to say?”
Lincoln said, “Yes, my dear, you can say whatever you want to say.”
“Does that mean,” she said, “That I can be whatever I want to be?”
Lincoln said, “Yes, you can be whatever you want to be.”
“Does that mean I can go wherever I want to go?”
He said, “Yes, you can go wherever you want to go.”
The girl, with tears streaming down her face, said, “Then I will go with you.” (Steve Brown, Preaching Today, #58)
What else could she do? This man had set her free; all she wanted to do was follow him. To follow any other master would only put her in bondage again. So it is with our God! He has set us free! To follow any other master would only put us in bondage again.
Pastor and author, Tim Keller, in his bestseller, The Reason for God, makes this point very vividly. He writes, “If you center your life and identity on your spouse or partner, you will be emotionally dependent, jealous, and controlling. The other person's problems will be overwhelming to you.
“If you center your life and identity on your family and children, you will try to live your life through your children until they resent you or have no self of their own. At worst, you may abuse them when they displease you.
“If you center your life and identity on your work and career, you will be a driven workaholic and a boring, shallow person. At worst you will lose family and friends and, if your career goes poorly, develop deep depression.
“If you center your life and identity on money and possessions, you'll be eaten up by worry or jealousy about money. You'll be willing to do unethical things to maintain your lifestyle, which will eventually blow up your life.
“If you center your life and identity on pleasure, gratification, and comfort, you will find yourself getting addicted to something. You will become chained to the ‘escape strategies’ by which you avoid the hardness of life.
“If you center your life and identity on relationships and approval, you will be constantly overly hurt by criticism and thus always losing friends. You will fear confronting others and therefore will be a useless friend.
“If you center your life and identity on a ‘noble cause,’ you will divide the world into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and demonize your opponents. Ironically, you will be controlled by your enemies. Without them, you have no purpose.
“If you center your life and identity on religion and morality, you will, if you are living up to your moral standards, be proud, self-righteous, and cruel. If you don't live up to your moral standards, your guilt will be utterly devastating. (Tim Keller, The Reason for God, Dutton, 2008, pp. 275-276; www.PreachingToday.com)
That is the essence of idolatry – centering one’s life and identity on anyone or anything else but God, even if those things are good things. And it can only lead to bondage and pain. On the other hand, when we center our life and identity on God, and God alone, then we are set free!
In his book Fill These Hearts, Christopher West describes a surprising and simple discovery that changed his marriage:
Years ago, his wife and he were out to dinner when she observed that something was different about their marriage in recent years, something good. She asked him if he had any insight into what it was. After reflecting a bit, he said with a smile, “Yeah, I think I know what it is. I think I've been realizing deep in my heart that you can't satisfy me.”
She got a big smile on her face and said, “Yeah, that's it. And I've been realizing the same thing: you can't satisfy me either."
Somebody overhearing that conversation would have thought they were about to get divorced; but to Christopher and his wife, that realization was cause for joy and celebration. They had never felt closer and freer in their love.
Christopher West says, “Only to the degree that we stop expecting others to be ‘god’ for us, are we free to love others as they really are, warts and all, without demanding perfection of them, whether a spouse, a friend, a son or daughter, or any other relationship. And only to the degree that we are free from idolizing… human beings are we also free to take our ache for perfect fulfillment to the One who alone can satisfy it” (Christopher West, Fill These Hearts, Image, 2012, pp. 159-160; www.PreachingToday.com)
Look to God and God alone for your satisfaction. Don’t let any other gods take His place, not your spouse, not your children, not your money or anything else, because only God sets you free!
So center your life on God, because of who He is – He is the LORD; because of who’s He is – He is YOUR God; and because of what He’s done – He has set you free.
Will you make that commitment today? Will you tell the Lord from your heart, “I will serve you, and you, alone”? Then pray with me…
Closing Song:
I Will Serve Thee, because I love Thee.
You have given life to me.
I was nothing before You found me.
You have given life to me
Heartaches, broken pieces,
Ruined lives are why You died on Calv'ry.
Your touch was what I longed for;
You have given life to me. (Bill Gaither).
