Treasuring God’s Gifts:

Results in Living Content with What He Provides!

Exodus 20:17, Eph 2;!0

† IHS †

My friends, my desire for us for this Lenten Season is this, that from us is removed all that hides that we are the Masterpiece of Christ. For that is what God’s grace and mercy does, leaving us in His peace.

Lent’s Beginning

From now until Easter Sunday morning, we find ourselves in the time of the year know as Lent.  Some think it is a time to sacrifice, to give up something, to embrace some suffering, and doing without, to help us realize what it costs to give up pleasure, to suffer.  So they give up candy, or caffeine, or some have even suggested giving up all things electronic!

As I look at it, its not about sacrificing that which is good, or even that which we treasure in order to suffer.  It’s about seeing our idols sacrificed, the things we give control over our lives, a time of testing them.  Because if it is a god, it can be killed off and rise again, without our help, without our desire.

Lent is about purifying ourselves from our self-centeredness, not because we have to, but because we know these things have power over us, they take our attention off of God.  In doing so, they rob us of remembering God’s grace, of remembering our access of Him.

As we journey through this particular year of Lent, it is going to be a journey where we begin to treasure God’s gifts to us more, to treasure the promises, and the life He has created us to live, the work of our lives that with Him are glorious.

The works that sin would mar, that self-centeredness would hide from us…

That is why we hear in Luke, that the life God commissions for us, the masterpiece He’s designed can be summarized in two statements.

Love Him,

Love those He brings into our lives.

All of them.

We are going to look at the 10 commandments, in a way that we don’t often talk about them.  To see them as God’s blessing of our lives, as the Old Testament version of the Beatitudes.  We are going through them backward, seeing them confront our lives, not to condemn or judge us, but to free us, in order to love each other, in order to love each other, and those who so desperately need the freedom we rejoice in.

So let’s get at it.

The Challenge of Contentment

In the ninth and tenth commandment, the issue is described as not coveting, not desiring that which others have been given, the blessings and curses with which they have to live.  That’s one of the odder things, we often desire what those who have them consider great burdens!

The opposite of coveting, of desiring what others have, is knowing contentment.

Be satisfied with what you have, not letting some thing or someone so consume you, that your thoughts are consumed, and eventually your heart and mind by possessing it, by getting their affection.  To believe that your life will only complete if you get that car, or can live in that kind of house, or get that next promotion, or if can have a relationship like the ones you have with others.  Or simply have their life, or their health.

Contentment, a hard thing to have, its completely contrary to the environment we live in, that we’ve been raised in.  Today it might be having the Benz, or the BMW, or going to that school, or on that vacation, or having a spouse that looks like, acts like, etc.

The Real Challenge – Will We Trust God Completely?
       Do We Believe His promise?

As we will see with every single commandment, there is a challenge that is far deeper than the challenge we see.  The “rules”, the shall nots and shalls, are often misunderstood as regulations, even as we often see religion and relationship with God somehow divided.

But the basis of the commandments, or the Decalogue as it used to be called, is not a list of impossible commands, it is the life that God described through the apostle Paul.
For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago!

The commandments, the Decalogue is about trusting God has made our lives into that masterpiece, into something where we can do the good things that He has planned, to live our lives in His presence, to love Him with all we are, and to love those around us fully, and with abandon.

TO live content is nothing less, than to see God’s blessing of each of us, and to realize He knows what He is doing.  That if one person has more, or less, then God has given them a burden.  It is there in contentment we find the healing that comes when we give up the desires that dominate and oppress us. The desires that somehow turn into what we deserve, what we have a right too, will slowly disappear as we see Christ, and the cross, and His gifts to us.

Contentment is about trusting God’s wisdom, trusting what He given us, from our talents and abilities, to the blessings of our homes and all in them, to the blessings of the relationships He has called us into, professionally, our family and friends, even our romantic relationships.

As we realize these treasures, given to us by the One we treasure above all, we find ourselves trying to help others realize how they are blessed, more than we chase what they have. More than we let desire consume us, we can help them, and they us, enjoy our blessings, the different things God gives us.

You see, the masterpiece God has commissioned, like a rich person commissioning an sculpture, or a painting, or a musical, is not about restricting us from fun, or living the good life.  These commandments are about living a full and abundant life.

Lent is realizing that we need His presence to live this way, to have Him fix the times we fail to, to bring healing to the times we ignore His presence.

We can’t live this way, without Him, we don’t have the strength, or the power, or the ability to.  But as we journey to the cross, as we realize His care and His design, and His desire to see us this way….

We find ourselves treasuring His ways, because we treasure Him. Because we know His love, and His work transforming us, and we trust Him because of it.

and there we find peace….

Let us pray..