Life is all about relationships. A significant part of what it means for us to be created in the image of God is to be relational. God Himself is a relational being. Not only does He relate personally to us as His image-bearers, He also has enjoyed perfect relational harmony as Father, Son, and Spirit from all eternity.
Our greatest joys and sorrows come because of relationships. In order for us to live as we ought, we must have our relationships properly ordered. This means that we must relate to the right things in the right way. God has not left us to figure out on our own how to do this. He has spoken very simply and clearly about the essence and priority of all human relationships. Jesus explained it when answering a question from a lawyer.
“Which is the great commandment in the Law?” (Matt. 22:36). The question seems innocent enough until we consider its background and context. The Jewish leaders had plotted against Jesus and were trying to “entangle him in his talk” (v. 15). After turning the tables on them when they asked Him about taxes, exposing their ignorance of Scripture and God’s power concerning the resurrection, He entertained this question about the law.
Rabbis had lengthy debates over this question. They had divided the Mosaic Law into 613 commands — 248 positive ones and 365 negative ones. Their arguments focused on which ones are great and heavy versus those that are small and light.
In order for us to live as we ought, we must have our relationships properly ordered.
Jesus dismissed all of those niggling debates by giving a comprehensive answer that both satisfied the inquisitor and revealed God’s overarching will for those who bear His image. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt: 22:37–40).
Jesus’ answer gives the point and purpose of the whole law. He summarizes our complete responsibility in terms of relationships, specifically, our relationships to God and to people. The essence of all our relationships, He says, is love.
The first priority of love is God Himself. We are to love God comprehensively and supremely. Heart, soul, and mind are each qualified by “all,” indicating that we are obligated to love God with every part of every faculty that we possess.
What does such love look like? Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). So obedience is closely connected to loving the Lord, but it is not enough to say that they are the same thing. Love is more than an act of the will. It includes that, but it first arises in the affections.
John makes this connection in 1 John 5:3 where he writes, “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.” Loving God involves keeping His commandments — not as a burden but as a delight. More than a dozen times this attitude of delighting in God’s law is expressed in Psalm 119.
Augustine described the love that we are to have for God as “the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for His own sake, and the enjoyment of one’s self and of one’s neighbor for the sake of God.” To love God is to enjoy Him above everything and everyone else and out of that joy to live in glad obedience to His will.
But Jesus does not stop there. He goes on to teach us that, after loving God supremely, our next greatest responsibility is to love people sincerely. Contrary to what some teach about this, Jesus is not commanding self-love. Nor should His words be taken to imply that we cannot love others until we learn to love ourselves.
To love God is to enjoy Him above everything and everyone else and out of that joy to live in glad obedience to His will.
Jesus assumes that we already do love ourselves. Paul explicitly makes this point by noting that “no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it” (Eph. 5:29). This kind of natural self-love is manifested by the choices that we make to serve our own interests. No matter how destructive such choices are, they are expressions of self-love.
Once we understand the inevitability of self-love, Jesus’ command that we love others as much as we love ourselves becomes incredibly broad. The health, comfort, companionship, and benefits that I desire for myself I am also to desire for my neighbors.
This means that while I must never love people — even my closest relations — more than God, I must love them as much as I love myself.
All of this, of course, shows how completely dependent we are on the grace of Jesus Christ. We cannot love God supremely or people sincerely apart from His love first reaching us through the power of the Gospel. Only as we are so loved will we be set free to love in return.

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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

— Lamentations 3:22-23

There is a vital relationship between your memory and your anticipation. Memory provides the foundation for expectation. What you remember powerfully influences what you expect. What you know and can recall inevitably fuels what you anticipate.

My favorite restaurant is a local place called The Blue Dog. I have always enjoyed wonderful meals served by friendly staff there. My past dining experiences make me anticipate another excellent meal the next time I eat there. 

The same thing is true of gathered worship. The sweet memories of meeting with and hearing from God that believers share together on the Lord’s Day cause them to look forward with great anticipation to the next opportunity to meet. 

But it works the other way, too. If you remember bad experiences in a restaurant then it will be difficult to have high expectations when you are invited there for another meal. 

What you remember necessarily influences what you anticipate. Because this is true your memory can either work FOR you or AGAINST you when it comes to your spiritual life. 

Are you ever haunted by memories? David was: “My sin is ever before me” (Psalm 51:3). The sons of Korah also were plagued by difficult memories: “All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face” (Psalm 44:15). 

Remembering your past failures and sins can keep you locked in the dungeon of despair. 

John Bunyan graphically portrays this in Pilgrim’s Progress. Giant Despair captures Christian and Hopeful and locks them in Doubting Castle, where they are beaten and tormented for four days. What kept them in that sad condition? It was their memory of their past failures! They had left the right road—despite having been warned of that danger. They also took their ease in by-path meadow and fell asleep when they should have been watching. It was the memory of their many sins that kept them in despair.

Has that ever happened to you? One of my favorite hymns expresses it well:

When I look all around me

And all I can see

Are my mountains of failure and sin

When I’m standing accused

And I’m guilty as charged

And I’ve nothing that I can defend

Those times when you are facing hardships, and you know that they are the result of your own sin and foolish choices. Or the times you look back on opportunities squandered and your mind begins to play the “what if” game. 

• What if I had not married so hastily?

• What if I had not committed adultery?

• What if I had stayed in school?

• What if I had not cheated on the job?

• What if I had never smoked that first joint?

Memory can supply the club in Giant Despair’s hand to bludgeon you until you are almost spiritually senseless. 

But memory can also be the chauffeur of peace, hope, and comfort to your soul, when, in addition to remembering your sins, it brings back to your mind the mercy and grace of God in Jesus Christ.

What finally delivered Christian and Hopeful from Doubting Castle? It was the memory that they had in their possession a key called promise! When that thought occurred to him, Christian said, “What a fool am I to lie in a stinking dungeon, when I may as well walk in liberty! I have a key in my bosom, called Promise; that will, I am persuaded, open any lock in Doubting Castle.”

He was correct. The memory of God’s grace & of His mercy-filled promises in Christ set them free. “For all the promises of God find their Yes in [Christ]. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory” (2 Corinthians 1:20). 

The steadfast love of the Lord cannot ever cease because it has been given to us in Christ. By His life, death, and resurrection, He has sealed and secured it forever for all who trust in Him. 

So, what do Christians do when all they can see is their sin? What do we do when we are justly accused with no defense to make for ourselves? We return to the One who has proven faithful throughout all of our life. 

I will hope in the One

Crucified in my place

Jesus Christ the Redeemer of men

I will trust in the righteousness

Given to me

By Jesus my Savior and Friend

Trust and hope in our crucified, risen, reigning Savior. Remember Him. Remember His faithfulness in the past. He never forsakes His people. He never has let one of His promises fail. So, regardless of where you are or what you are going through, trust Him now. Trust Him for your future. 

Remember His goodness, wisdom and power. And say with Jeremiah, “Great is Your faithfulness.”

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The Eighth Commandment—“Thou shalt not steal”—sanctions property rights, but Psalm 24:1-2 declares that the Lord holds clear title to all there is, and that our ownership is both contingent upon his good pleasure and accountable to his principle of stewardship:
The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof;
The world, and they that dwell therein.
For he hath founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the floods. [1]
Earth and World
 Verse one employs two Hebrew words to express the extent of God’s reign, the first, aretz (‘earth’), denotes material resources; the second, tebel (‘world’), connects the earth to human enterprise. The Septuagint tracks with this, using gefor ‘earth’ (hence, ‘geology’) and oikoumene for ‘world’ (connected with ‘ecumenical’). Thus, the span of God’s provision and sovereignty is beneficently universal.
Citing Ecclesiastes 1:4, Gregory of Nyssa observes that the earth ministers “to every generation, first one, then another, that is born on it.” [2] Matthew unpacks the extent of the earth’s “ministry,” saying,

The mines that are lodged in the bowels of it, even the richest, the fruits it produces, all the beasts of the forest and the cattle upon a thousand hills, our lands and houses, and all the improvements that are made of this earth by the skill and industry of man, are all his. . . . All the parts and regions of the earth are the Lord’s, all under his eye, all in his hand: so that wherever a child of God goes, he may comfort himself with this, that he does not go off his Father’s ground.[3]

Spurgeon speaks of its “fullness” in terms of “its harvests, its wealth, its life, or its worship; in all these senses the Most High God is Possessor of all.”[4] And Derek Kidner says the word “conjures up its wealth and fertility, seen here not as man’s for exploitation, but, prior to that, as God’s, for his satisfaction and glory . . .”[5]
“Ride, Jesus, Ride!”
Of course, materialists beg to differ (yea proudly insist upon differing). By their lights (or rather from their gloom), they deny the artistry, authority, and generosity of God in creation. They fail or refuse to grasp the obvious truth that God supplied graciously arable soil, fishable waters, and huntable woods; flax, wool, and cotton for weaving; timber and gypsum for building; metals for machinery; fossil fuels for heating and transportation; organic compounds for medicine and palliation—salicin from the willow, quinine from the cinchona, and codeine from the opium poppy. On and on the provision extends. And, of course, it extends to the human ingenuity required to marshal these resources for our benefit.
As poet Gerald Manley Hopkins observed, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” [6] and blessed in the sensible person who notes it. Back in the 1970s, I heard, in a Wheaton College chapel message by E. V. Hill, who described a parishioner who was ever so aware of God’s magnificent immanence. Hill told of his own boyhood congregation’s response when tornado warnings came their way down in Texas. The church had a big basement, and the flock would rush to gather there until the winds subsided. But one time, after counting noses, they discovered that “the Old Widder Jones” was missing, so some hearty volunteers jumped into a buckboard and raced to her house. When they got there, they found the home creaking in the wind with the windows wide open, the curtains blowing straight out on one side and straight in on the other. Flinging open the door, they spied her across the room, rocking furiously in her favorite chair, exclaiming, “Ride, Jesus, ride!”
I hasten to say I’m writing this the week after a horrific tornado leveled Mayfield, Kentucky, killing dozens there and elsewhere in its path. So I don’t want to suggest that Jesus initiated the ruination—and, as some might suggest, as an act of judgment on that community. (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar went down this road shamefully in Job.) But Mrs. Jones had it right when she recognized the sovereignty of God in all Creation, not just at the outset, but throughout its every age. And so should we. (Yes, I know about the Problem of Evil; I’ve taught whole courses on it; but here I appeal to the “Soul-Making Theodicy”—which argues that the rigors and perils of life after the Fall are perfectly ordered for God’s saving and sanctifying purposes.)
The Lord’s Aesthetic Purposes
We’ve noted the nutritional and industrial provisions of the earth, but we must also give the Lord’s artistry its due. In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard tells of a practice she had as a little girl, back when a penny meant a lot to her. She would hide one of these coins among exposed tree roots and other notches and then write in chalk on the sidewalk just up the way, “Surprise Ahead,” with arrows leading to the treasure. She then observed that those who would take time to humble themselves and slow down to search out the beautiful in nature would be rewarded, for “the world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand.” [7]
Well, as we know, the Lord has not only strewn pennies in the form of a “tremulous ripple thrill on the water” signaling the emergence of “a muskrat kit paddling from its den” (Dillard’s example), but also the golden coins, indeed ingots of precious aesthetic “metal,” appearing around the world. These manifestations have inspired poets and composers as well as painters and photographers. Thus we are witness to Henry Wadworth Longfellow’s A Day of Sunshine, Carl Sandburg’s Fog, Edgar Guest’s It’s September, and to countless celebrations of nature from the likes of Frost, Wordsworth, Keats, Kipling, Blake, Tennyson, Nash, and Burns. As for picturesque program music, we enjoy Claude Debussy’s orchestral piece La Mer, Ferde Grofés’ Grand Canyon Suite, Bedrich Smetana’s symphonic poem, The Moldau, and Antonio Vivaldi’s violin concertos, The Four Seasons.
As for paintings, let’s focus on a small sampling of four that suggest themselves upon a reading of Psalm 24.
Young Hare (1502), Albrecht Dürer, The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria.
 Dürer was a contemporary of his fellow German, Martin Luther, and though the artist’s roots were Catholic, he showed sympathy for the Reformer’s cause. Though a great many of his works dealt with religious themes, including the oft-reproduced Praying Hands, he also had an eye for nature, as with this painting of a rabbit and also in his woodcut, The Rhinoceros, which he drew without having ever seen one, working only from a verbal description and another’s brief sketch.
When the words ‘earth,’ ‘world,’ and ‘fullness’ are deployed, we typically think of matters on the grand scale—the Great Plains, the Alps, the Everglades, the Gulf Stream, the Sahara, the Amazon Rainforest. But God has filled these great sectors with equally amazing, diminutive critters, such as this hare. And for those who would demean man as an insignificant creature on a small planet in an unfathomably vast universe, C. S. Lewis replies, “[T]he argument from size, is in my opinion, very feeble”; [8] size is irrelevant to honor, for a tiny, sapient man, who alone among sentient beings has the power to appreciate the “the great nebula in Andromeda,” is more wonderful than the stupendous astronomical displays he’s appreciating.[9]
The Harvesters (1565), Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York

 Bruegel was a leading artist of the Dutch-Flemish Renaissance. This particular painting was commissioned by a Belgian merchant, one of six works representing human activity in the progression of seasons, this one focused on late summer. (Another well-known piece in this cycle is The Hunters in the Snow.) Though Bruegel painted religious subjects, such as The Fall of Rebel Angels, The Blind Leading the Blind, and The Census at Bethlehem, he was best known for his “genre paintings” of peasants. I should add that this was a time of great religious tension in Europe, as Bruegel was born just eight years after Martin Luther penned his Ninety-Five Theses.
The Harvesters records and honors both man and nature—the golden sea of wheat, crisply delineated by scythes, instruments of human ingenuity with ergonomic handles and blades the deliverance of metallurgy; the fellowship and refreshment of lunchtime, including a loaf a bread, whose substance comes from such sheaves as stand all around; the mercies of shade and a nap; and a vista easy on the eyes.  It’s enough to send an artist looking for his brushes and easel.

[1] I use KJV here since the lyric quality of the iambic tetrameter in the first verse (which the RSV and ESV preserve) is lost in, for example, in such estimable translations as the NIV (“. . . with everything in it . . . and all who live in it”), the HCSB (“ . . . and its inhabitants”), and the NASB (“ . . . and those who live in it”). Of course, all of them report accurately that the Psalmist celebrated the comprehensive authorship and disposition of the cosmos and its occupants.
[2] Gregory of Nyssa, “Exposition of the Psalms 24:2,” quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament VII, Psalms 1-50, edited by Craig A. Blaising and Carmen S. Hardin, Thomas C. Oden, general editor (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 2008), 185
[3] Matthew Henry,  Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, Vol. III—Job to Song of Solomon (New York: Fleming H. Revell,  1975 ) 319.
[4] C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, Volume I (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson,  1990), 374.
[5] Derek Kidner, Psalms 1-72: An Introduction & Commentary (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 1973), 113.
[6] Gerald Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur.” Accessed January 5, 2022 at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44395/gods-grandeur.
[7] Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 14-15.
[8] C. S. Lewis, “Dogma and the Universe,” God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 39.
[9] Lewis, “Dogma,” 41-42.

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