“Flattery” is speech which praises someone insincerely by beguiling them with pleasing words.” Flattery, while approaching truth, often has the ulterior motivation of manipulation. Flattery often sounds true, but it comes from a deceitful heart. Consider these two examples: first, a young man who is truly infatuated with a young woman, speaks his heart and tells her that she is the most beautiful person he has ever met. He is speaking from his heart, and he means every word of what he says. Second, a different young man tells the same woman that she is the most beautiful person he has ever met, but he has ulterior motives. In his heart he wants to seduce her, and he is looking for a way to manipulate her into agreeing to be with him. Because the words spoken are the same, it is hard to determine if someone is being genuine or if they are engaging in manipulative flattery.

In Psalm 78:36, the psalmist says, “these people would then flatter him with their mouths, lying to them with their tongues.” In the context of that verse, God has rescued his people from their enemies, and immediately after their rescue, they were grateful. However, in a short time, their praises of gratitude turned to flattery. Had we been observing those people, we might not have seen the difference, but God knew that what he was receiving was not praise but flattery.

The Hebrew word for flattery is not often used of human attitudes toward God, but it is used fairly regularly of interactions between humans. We recall that Delilah, Samson’s wife flattered him so that he would explain the riddle he had created which, if Delilah’s people, the Philistines, could not answer it, would result in Samson receiving 30 sets of clothes from them. The NIV says that she “coaxed” him. Hebrew dictionaries say that what she did was flatter him so that he was in a position in which he was no longer master of himself with the result that he would reveal the answer to the riddle to his wife. Delilah wanted to control her husband, and she used flattery to do so.

We might ask the question: how is it possible to do the same thing with God? If flattery involves praising someone with the intent of taking control of them, can that work with God? It won’t work with God, of course, for he can see right through flattery because he knows the inclinations of the human heart. That doesn’t mean that people will stop trying to flatter God, however, for they still think it is possible to do so.

Flattering God has its roots in the pagan religions of the Old Testament. As we know the gods that the people of the other nations worshipped had made no commitment to the people who honoured them. Thus, the people could not depend on the favour of the gods, so they had to find some way to get the gods to bless them. They tried to find ways to make it so the gods had no choice but to provide them with rain or victory or whatever else they (the people) happened to need at the time. Recall the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. When Elijah challenged them to a contest, the prophets of Baal spent all day calling on him to answer them, no doubt telling him how great a god he was. They went even further when he did not respond by cutting themselves with knives to show how committed they were to him. Surely Baal would listen to them when they sacrificed their own bodies. They believed they had to flatter him in order to get him to act. They wanted to put him into a position where he had no other option than to give them what they asked. They wanted to back him into a corner, giving him no other choice but to bless them.

The young woman who is being flattered by the young man might begin to think that she must give in to his seductive efforts, for, after all, he has complimented her so highly that she owes him. What she doesn’t realize is that he is thinking of himself first and what he can get rather than truly honouring her.

Psalm 76 tells us that the Israelites were flattering God. We are not told more, but we understand that they wanted to use God to get more of what he had already given them. He had given them victory over their enemies, and, they seemed to believe, if they could so flatter him that he owed them, he would become obligated to give them more than just victory over an attacking enemy. Perhaps they could get God to also enable them to defeat other nations so that they could loot them for the plunder that would make them (the Israelites) rich.

Flattery sounds like praise, but it is always done to manipulate another for one’s own benefit.

But certainly this does not occur today, does it? A few days ago, I was having a conversation with a fellow pastor who had been listening to a TV preacher. He was shocked by what he heard. This preacher was saying that he was doing everything he could to impress God that when he died and arrived at the Pearly Gates, God would be obligated to let him in. “I want God to owe me,” the preacher said. My fellow pastor was incredulous, even horrified, by what he had heard coming from the mouth of someone who supposedly was a fellow believer. This TV preacher was convinced that if he had enough faith and if he lived the right kind of life that God would owe him, not only when he got to heaven but also here on this earth. This particular preacher was of the “Prosperity Gospel” persuasion which teaches, in effect, that if we do everything right and do it with the proper amount of faith, God will have no other choice but to give us what we want. In other words, this preacher believed he could flatter God with his actions and words and so take control of God and manipulate him into what he (the preacher) wanted.

This preacher, who has quite a following, clearly does not understand God. Along with the people referred to in Psalm 76 he believes that God is susceptible to flattery. Unlike us, however, God sees the human heart, and he knows when genuine praise turns to selfish flattery. God sees through us quite easily, and he is never taken into by flattery.

The simple reality is that God cannot be flattered into thinking that he owes us something because God will never be in a position where he owes us anything. Anything we have is given to us as a gift, and we do not earn it. Everything we have is a result of God’s grace. Further, we do not have to manipulate God into caring for us (as the nations had to do with the pagan gods) because God has already committed himself to us. He makes the first move by inviting us into covenant relationship with him, and he promises to take care of us. Our actions are simply responses to what God has already promised, and there is nothing we can do to make him more committed to us. Certainly, we cannot back God into a corner by our praise or faith or actions, making it so that God owes us because those are the very thing we owe God in the first place.

Flattering God never works, although we might be deceived into thinking that we can manipulate God by being faithful and obedient. God sees right through that, and he is never impressed, just as the young woman, if she understood that the man was trying to manipulate her into giving him what he wants, would not be impressed. The only advantage that the man has is that he might be able to fool her. We cannot fool God. We don’t need to because God is already committed to us, and when it comes down to it, what more do we need?

Last week, while preparing for a sermon, I encountered the name, Melchizedek. Melchizedek was a contemporary to Abraham, and we can find his story in Genesis 14. Melchizedek, as we learn there, was the king of a place named Salem. The Hebrew word for city is “Yir,” and if we put the two words together, we get the name, Yirsalem, or, as we know it, Jerusalem. Melchizedek was king of what eventually became the capital city of Israel, but it did not become the capital until the time of David, some 1000 years later. Salem is also a Hebrew word, meaning “peace.” And the name, Melchizedek means “king of righteousness.” So, Melchizedek is both the king of righteousness and the king of peace.

We know almost nothing about Melchizedek. He was not from the line of Abraham, so he has no claim to the covenant that God would eventually make with Abraham. At the same time, we know that he was a priest of God Most High, and Abraham understood that Melchizedek worshipped the same God as the God who called Abraham out of Ur to go to the Promised Land. We know, further, that Abraham gave to Melchizedek one tenth of the plunder from a recent battle, thus naming Melchizedek as a priest worthy of the tithe, a practice that was commanded by God for the Israelites and their priests years later.

Although he is somewhat of an enigmatic figure, Melchizedek appears a couple of ther times in Scripture, particularly in Psalm 110 which is later quoted in the letter to the Hebrews. Jesus is said to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek. But what does the author of Hebrews mean?

To understand this, we need to think about the descendants of Abraham as they were travelling to the Promised Land. Jacob had 12 sons, and one of those sons was named Levi. Levi became the priestly tribe to whom the tithe was due and of whom it was required that they lead the people to God through sacrifices and teaching.

As the Israelites travelled toward the Promised Land, God chose Aaron, Moses’ brother, to be the High Priest, the one who had the most immediate access to God and who offered the more important sacrifices on the altar. Eliezer, Aaron’s son, would succeed him as high priest. Eliezer had a son named Phinehas, and Phinehas, in a display of loyalty to God, was blessed with becoming the head of a dynasty of high priests. His descendants would continue to operate as high priests forever, according to Numbers 25:10ff. By making this covenant, God committed himself to providing a high priest who would always stand between him and a sinful people, offering sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins.

After the Israelites entered the promised land, however, things became chaotic. In the time of the Judges, the people turned away from God repeatedly, and the good order that God had established disappeared. Each successive judge, in turn, was worse than the previous one until we get to Samson who seems to be the only one God has to work with, and Samson would never be identified as a godly man. While the nation of Israel descended into chaos, the high priestly calling also suffered. At some point, and we don’t know when, the high priest, although a descendant of Aaron, was no longer from the line of Phinehas through Eliezer. Instead, when we begin reading 1 Samuel, we encounter a high priest named Eli who was, most likely, a descendant of Aaron but not through Eliezer. Scholars are fairly certain that he was a descendant of Ithamar, Aaron’s other son. Thus, while God continued to raise up a priest for his people, the priest was not the one who was according to God’s covenantal promises. Eli was close, but not close enough.

As we know, Eli’s sons were miserable people, engaging in all kinds of sin and completely unworthy of taking their father’s place. so Samuel foretold that Eli’s family would be removed from serving in the office of high priest. A few decades later, David who had become king, appointed a new high priest by the name of Zadok. Zadok was a descendant of Phinehas and was the fulfilment of God’s promises made much earlier. Even the exile into Babylon did not thwart God’s promises, and Ezra, after the exile, was a descendant of Zadok (and Phinehas, Eliezer, and Aaron), and he led the people in the ways of the Lord. As time passed, the family of Zadok continued to bear his name, and eventually, scholars believe, became known as the Sadducees. Annas and Caiaphas were Zadokians, or, as we better know them, Sadducees, and appropriately able to be high priests. The only problem was that Annas and Caiaphas his son-in-law, were appointed by the Roman government and were judged to be inappropriate high priests by many of the people who lived at that time. Still and all, they exercised their authority, and under their guidance, Jesus was crucified.

According to Scripture, Jesus’ death on the cross was a sacrifice that was sufficient to atone for all sins for all time and no other sacrifice was needed. But who would be the high priest who would offer that sacrifice? Certainly the reigning high priests of his time were not worthy of such a task. The author of Hebrews tells us that not only was Jesus the sacrifice, but he was also the high priest.

And that creates a problem. According to Scripture, God would always provide a high priest for his people, but that high priest was to be from the line of Phinehas, a Zadokian, and a Sadducee. Jesus was none of those. The author of Hebrews gets around that problem by remembering Melchizedek. Melchizedek was a recognized priest of God, but he lived at the time of Abraham, long before the tribe of Levi came into existence and certainly before the time of Aaron and Eliezer and Phinehas. But his role was significant enough for the author of Hebrews, quoting from Psalm 110 to say that although Jesus did not have the right biological history, he could be the high priest because Melchizedek had set a precedent. One did not have to be from the line of Phinehas to take on that role. The author of Hebrews that Jesus is a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.

Although God did not use the family life of Phinehas, he still provided a high priest that was far better than the high priests of the OT. He provided one that offered himself as a sacrifice and that sacrifice was far better than the one offered on the altar in the temple in Jerusalem. Further, as the ultimate high priest, Jesus did not have to offer multiple sacrifices but, rather, offered one sacrifice that would always be sufficient.

God had promised that he would always provide a high priest so that the people of this world could have their sins atoned for, and he provided one in Jesus Christ. This high priest’s sacrifice was offered once for all, and it was sufficient for all.

In this, we see that God eagerly desires to be in good relationship with us, and by his grace he makes it possible, providing a high priest in the order of Melchizedek and providing a sacrifice that would cover all sins.

Faith practices. What are they? When I was talking with a colleague about leading devotions for youth, he told me about this resource on the CRC website called “Faith Practices.” I decided to look it up, and I what I found was quite interesting and helpful. What I found was also a little unexpected, for I thought I would find topics like personal devotions, prayer, worship, and the like. These are important for nurturing our faith, but that is not what the website was talking about. Instead, I found such topics as sabbath, generosity, and gratitude. I was a little puzzled at first, but as I read through the material, I understood better the direction that the website was taking its readers as it talked about faith practices.

We are granted the ability to believe by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit in us. This we confess as Reformed Christians. If it were not for the work of the Holy Spirit, we would not come to believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins. So, our faith is first and foremost the work of the Spirit in us. But when we have faith, we can develop that faith so that we believe all the more. Growing in our faith by putting our faith to work is what practicing our faith is all about.

So, let’s take generosity as an example. How does being generous help us become stronger in our faith? In the opening verses of 1 Corinthians 8 Paul is commending the Macedonian Christians for their faithful giving. There was a famine in Jerusalem, and Paul decided to go to the Christian churches which had been established throughout much of southern Europe and ask the believers there to give money to help their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. The Macedonians had taken a sizable collection, and they had sent it with Paul to bring to Jerusalem What amazed Paul was that the Macedonian Christians were not wealthy. In fact, he tells us that they were living in near poverty, having only enough to feed themselves, if that. Yet, they gave, and they gave beyond what they were really able to give.

Contrast this to a man I talked to several years ago. He told me that he gave to the church, but he always waited until the end of the month to do so. His argument: I don’t know what expenses I will have, and I need to make sure that I meet those first before I give away my money. I need to live. Because I know him reasonably well, I would say, further, that he was not the first person who comes to mind when I think of generous people. It should be said that he also wasn’t the richest man in the church, although he had more than enough to live on.

So, let’s go back to the Macedonians. They gave beyond what they were able, but how were they able to do so? The answer is simple: they trusted that God would provide for them if they would find themselves in need. By giving more than they had, they were learning to trust God. It was vital that someone help the people in Jerusalem, for they were on the verge of starvation. The Macedonians understood that if they didn’t give, their brothers and sisters in Christ would not survive, and they put their own wellbeing on the line to help them. They were generous, and their generosity caused them to have to trust in God.

Many of us reading this, if we live in Canada, have more than enough money, and most of us can give some away without feeling any great negative impact. Some of us could live until we are 150 years old and still have some money left over. Many of those who have more money than they need are also quite generous, and that is wonderful. And we should continue to give out of our bounty to help those in need. At the same time, if we give what we have without feeling the impact on our lives, perhaps that is not the kind of generosity that increases our faith. So, instead, we might need to look at something else in our lives that is in short supply.

One of the things that people seem to claim to have too little of is time. Time does seem to be in short supply, and perhaps that is where we need to learn to be generous. There are lots of people whose needs to not require money in order to have those needs met. Some people are lonely. Some need some repairs done to their decks. Others cannot drive safely to get their groceries. Giving a little time will help them greatly. But can we afford that time? Probably not, but then we also must not forget that God, who is the creator of time, can also give us time that we didn’t know we had. Relying on God for what we do not have is a way of practicing our faith.

Or some of us have no room in our lives for others. We have many friends, and we are surrounded by family. We don’t know if we have the mental or emotional capacity to have someone else become part of our lives. Of course, as we well know, there are people who have almost no social life. Perhaps they have just moved to the community. Perhaps their family circle is really small or even non-existent. Or perhaps they are a little odd and maybe a bit hard to get along with. Can we be generous with our relationships? It’s hard, of course, and we might fear that leaving the supporting network of family and friends is a little dangerous. But can we be generous, trusting that God will also meet that need?

Being generous is faith building especially when we are generous with what we view as a scarce resource of commodity. Money, time, social group, or maybe something else are things that we need and sometimes we don’t feel we have enough of. When we are generous with those things that we have in short supply, and when we are generous with the understanding that God will meet our needs, then being generous is a way to build our faith. Generosity can be a faith practice, a way to learn to trust God more.

I would not have identified generosity as a faith building exercise, but it is. When we think about it, the more we give of what we have to help others, the more we have to rely on God. And the more we rely on God, the more we will find his trustworthy, and the more we find him trustworthy, the greater will be our faith.

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” These were the words of John Donne, a pastor in England in the 17^th century. It was common practice to ring the church bell when someone in the community died, and often people would say, “I wonder who died.” John Donne said that when someone dies, the tolling of the bell signals not only the loss of the life of an individual but also the loss of life of the community. A few lines earlier he had said in the same sermon, “No man is an island,” meaning that we all are connected together and the loss of one is a loss for all.

Most of us have experienced this at one time or another. Over the years members of my congregation have passed on to glory, and they always leave a vacant spot. A part of the congregation dies with them. Two such occasions are significant. Dirk was a man of about 94 years old when he died from a short bout with cancer. Up to the end his mind was sharp, and my conversations with him were always good. When he died, all his wisdom became unavailable to his family and the church. I had a similar experience with Sylvia. She was a quiet woman who didn’t say much when I visited her, but for some reason, when she died, I found myself missing her deeply. I wasn’t all that close with either Dirk or Sylvia, but I felt their loss profoundly. I felt that the bell was tolling for me along with the rest of the community as well.

But it doesn’t take a death to cause the bell to toll and for us to experience a loss. In the last few months a number of churches in our denomination have been moving toward disaffiliation from the Christian Reformed Church. They have found the decisions made by our synod (a body which meets once a year made up of representatives from across the denomination) to be untenable. They feel that they can no longer be part of the denomination, and they have begun the process of cutting ties with the CRC. While those who remain committed to the CRC believe that their understanding of Scripture is faulty, we are saddened by their departure. We have been in fellowship with some of those churches for as long as 70 years. We have shared their joys and struggles. We have worshipped with them, learned with them, encouraged them and been held accountable by them. They have been an integral part of the life of our church for a long time, and when they decide to separate from the denomination, while we still can be in relationship with them, it is a little like a death. The bell tolls, not because a church has died but because the separation has the same feelings as a death. No longer will we enjoy the close fellowship we once had.

It’s not that we should compromise our beliefs to remain together. That would be impossible because we who are left believe firmly that our understanding of the social issues that have caused differences is biblically based and theirs is not. In fact, the denomination has clearly stated that what they espouse and teach is sin, and they have been called to repentance, and if they do not, they no longer have a voice at denominational tables. Our congregation believes firmly that while we all sin, if we remain in unrepented sin, we are breaking fellowship. They are remaining in unrepentant sin, and that is unacceptable.

Yet, we mourn the separation. The bell tolls when a church leaves, but it tolls for the separation, even if it not tolling because of the death of a church. We have lost life as well when the church is no longer united, and we mourn that loss. It is a sad time for our denomination and our congregation.

Death, by its very definition, is separation. Whether it is physical death (separation of body and spirit), spiritual death (separation of an individual from God) or the death of a relationship (separation of churches, for example), it is death, and it hurts. We miss the fellowship that once was.

I suppose that this experience of loss should make us long for the resurrection even more. Resurrections bring back together that which is separated (body and spirit, God and people, and churches and individuals who are at enmity with each other). We long for the resurrection which will happen when Jesus returns. Beyond the most wonderful joy of seeing Jesus face to face, I love for the renewed fellowship we will experience when we are reunited with our brothers and sisters who, at this point, have been separated by sinful perspectives and behaviour. We all are guilty of that, and we all experience the loss. In the resurrection, however, we will be brought together again, all of us who put our faith in Jesus, and we will live in unity again before our Father’s throne and in the presence of Jesus.

I suppose the brokenness that we are experiencing right now in our denomination should make us long even more for the sure hope of the resurrection. I look forward to spending eternity with fellow believers without the divisions caused by human error and sin. That will be a wonderful time, and I don’t think we will ever tire of it. May it be that Jesus returns quickly and does away with all the brokenness we create and brings us back to full and beautiful relationship both with the Father and with others. May that happen soon.

Theologians have often talked about two kinds of attributes of God: communicable attributes and incommunicable attributes. These are big words to describe something quite simple: as human beings, we share some (communicable) attributes with God (the ability to love, do good, and be fair and just) while we do not share others of his (incommunicable) attributes (eternality, unchangeable, infinite, almighty, etc.). There may be a third category, namely attributes that we have a small part of, but what we have is nothing in comparison what God has. We have knowledge, for example, but our knowledge is like a drop of water in the ocean compared to God’s knowledge. We have power, but our power is less than that of a snail in comparison to God’s power which is greater than that of an elephant. While we might use words like knowledge and power to describe human beings, it is almost ludicrous to think that we have anything that can really compare to what God has.

Yet, throughout history, it seems that people want to make believe that we have a lot more of these attributes than we really do. As a good example, we can think back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. These years followed the Enlightenment, a period of time when philosophers began to teach that if everyone on this earth really worked at it, we could solve all of our problems all by ourselves. God began to be removed from the picture as being the one who provides a solution to the problems faced by humanity. About 150 years ago, with huge advances being made in the fields of technology, manufacturing, medicine, transportation, and so much more, it looked like we were unstoppable. In 1900 it was quite common for many to think that in a short time, because of all the progress, there would be no problem common to man that would be insurmountable.

How wrong they were. In 1914, after a single shot was fired in Sarajevo, war broke out in Europe, and countries around the world were drawn into the battle. It was evident very early on that all the human ingenuity that had been used to find solutions to problems could also be used to create new ones. Weapons were fashioned such as had never been seen on the earth, weapons that could kill many people in seconds from a great distance. When the war ended four years later, the world was shaken. Millions of people had died, and many declared that we had learned our lesson, and WWI was known, however briefly, as the War to End All Wars. How wrong they were. Twenty-one years later a second massive war began, and it was more deadly than the earlier war, for we had figured out how to make even more powerful weapons with more deadly results. In addition, we had learned to vilify others and make them into non-humans so that we did not feel guilt when we killed them in gas chambers or by dropping thousands of bombs on a single city. The 20^th century saw more violent death than all of the other previous centuries combined.

What went wrong? A lot of things, but perhaps one of them was the attitude that we believe that we are more like God than we are. We have knowledge, but our knowledge has limitations. We might know how to create many new things, but we do not know how to stop at creating only good things, and we make things that are harmful as well. When God knows something and when he puts his knowledge into action, what results is always good. This is not true of humanity. Similarly, God uses his power for the benefit of others. Human beings do not. In fact, when people become powerful, the more powerful they are, the more corrupt they become, or so says Lord Acton.

It’s not that knowledge and power are bad things. If they were, would have a huge problem with God, for he is all-knowing and all-powerful. Rather, the problem arises when we begin to think that we have more knowledge and power than we really do and when we use that knowledge and power inappropriately. In other words, when we act independently of God, believing ourselves to be like him in ability, we run into all sorts of problems.

As people 150 years ago made huge advances in so many fields of study, they did not maintain an awe of God. With all that we can do, they began to think that God’s knowledge and power were really not all that special and that what God had to offer could be set aside. Humanity has come to believe that we have the same quantity of those somewhat communicable attributes as God has, with devastating results.

Today, God is largely forgotten, while at the same time humanity no longer believes that we can solve all of our problems. We have come to understand that we create more problems than we solve, and that leads us to a sense of despair. There is nothing we can do, and we have come to realize that. Analysts of the current western culture sense that there is a deep feeling of hopelessness today that was not present at the beginning of the last century. What we know is not enough, and what we can do is insufficient.

Perhaps the pendulum has begun to swing, and perhaps the hopelessness will bring people back to a recognition of a need for someone bigger than themselves. If that is true, then it is also true that we, as Christians, have what they are looking for, for we know God, and we know how we can know him. It is through Jesus of course, so it does appear that Jesus is the solution to the world’s problems, for he brings us back to God. When we know God, we realize how small our accomplishments and abilities are, and we are more willing to listen to him and learn from him and, then, in an act of humility, seek his help. We have knowledge, but God’s knowledge is better, and we have power, but God’s power is far greater. Living without God results in all sorts of problems; living with him and before him will enable us to use our knowledge and power, as insignificant as they may be, for the good of humanity.

When in school I worked part time in the kitchen as a student, mostly cleaning and washing dishes. On Saturdays, a crew of students was called in to do a deep cleaning that involved taking apart the air make-up unit above the stove and cleaning every part. It was a lot of work, and one week one of my fellow students suggested to the supervisor that we clean it every other week. The supervisor, who was very experienced, gave permission and that week we did not clean the unit. The next week when we began cleaning, we found that it was four times as dirty as it would have been had we cleaned it the previous week. The supervisor knew the consequences of neglecting the normal cleaning regimen, and he knew that if left just one week, the job would be so much more difficult.

A large city in the United States was having a problem with a dramatic increase in major crimes – murder, assault, and the like, and the chief of police was looking for a solution. A decade or so before, the police, because they were short staffed, decided to overlook some of the more petty crimes – shoplifting and vandalism and the like – and did not arrest of prosecute the offenders. Someone suggested that if the police began to crack down on minor crimes as well as dealing with major crimes that this would lead to a decrease in major crimes. Because nothing else seemed to work, this is what the police force did, and in a few years the number of major crimes began to fall. The conclusion was that when people who commit minor crimes, if left unpunished, will escalate into committing major crimes.

We could say the same about sin. We recall the story of David and Bathsheba. David happened to see a woman bathing on the roof of a neighbouring house and instead of turning away, he sent for the woman and one thing led to another, and she became pregnant. Because she was married, this posed an additional problem, namely that her husband could charge him with adultery, so he had her husband killed. A minor sin, left unchecked, turned into a major sin and, technically, according to the law, David could have been put to death for causing the death of another. If David had repented of his first sin, voyeurism, he would not have become a murderer.

The last of the 10 Commandments is the command that we not covet anything that belongs to our neighbour. Coveting is a sin that unseen and does not seem to be that significant, for, after all, what harm is there in desiring something that belongs to another. Yet, we would have to admit that if we didn’t desire something that was not ours, chances are we would not break any of the other commandments either. For example, if I didn’t covet the chocolate bar in the convenience store, it’s unlikely that I would steal it. Similarly, if no one ever looked with desire at someone to whom they were not married, it is unlikely that anyone would commit adultery. Some have said that coveting is the first step toward breaking the other commandments, and if we avoid coveting, we will be much more obedient to God’s will in all aspects of life.

The Heidelberg Catechism, in its discussion on the 10 Commandments, doesn’t say much about coveting as a sin in and of itself. Instead, when it answers the question, “What is God’s will for you in the tenth commandment,” it says, “That not even the slightest thought or desire contrary to any one of God’s commandments should ever arise in my heart.” Clearly the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism believed that the sin of coveting was tied to all the other commandments and was the beginning point for breaking those commandments.

Thus, while coveting seems to be the most insignificant of all the commandments, it is more like the minor crime which, if left unchecked, will develop into major crime. It is like the dirt on a ventilation unit that if left uncleaned will result in the more rapid accumulation of more dirt.

So, how do we avoid coveting? It’s not easy, but perhaps the first step is to be grateful for what we have. People who covet are counting the things they don’t have while people who are grateful count the things they do have. If we are grateful for our relationships, our possessions, our friends, our place in life, everything that God has given to us, we will have far less time to covet that which we don’t have.

Thanksgiving Day is in a few days, and we will be reminded to give God thanks for all his blessings. It would be good if we could count our blessings over the next few days and give God thanks for all of them. We might well find that as we name our blessings, we don’t really have room for that which we don’t have. Perhaps being grateful is the best antidote to coveting, and if we avoid coveting, we might be just a little better at avoiding those other sins as well.

In John 3 we find Jesus having a conversation with a Pharisee named Nicodemus. We do not know much about Nicodemus except to say that he showed an interest in what Jesus had to say, and in his first words to Jesus, he shows that he believes that Jesus has come from God because he is able to do things which only God can do. Nicodemus, being a Pharisee and a leader of the Jewish people, was very interested in what God was doing in his world. Thus, he has an interest in what Jesus is doing.

In response to Nicodemus’ interest, Jesus says something that could be construed as being rather insulting to Nicodemus. He says, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” This could be construed as being insulting to Nicodemus because Nicodemus believed that he was very much part of the kingdom of God, for, after all, he was a Pharisee who was born into God’s covenant community and did his best to live in obedience to God’s commands. He saw himself as being a faithful citizen of the kingdom of God, and for Jesus to talk about seeing the kingdom of God was to say that perhaps Nicodemus was not yet a citizen of that kingdom.

It is helpful to understand that the concept of being born again was not foreign to Nicodemus. From time to time a Gentile would become convinced that the God of the Jews was the only true God, and he would seek to become part of the covenant community. Through circumcision and obedience to the commands, a God-fearing Gentile could become a Jew, and his conversion was often referred to as being born into the new community. His new life began at the moment he was welcomed into the covenant community. For Jesus to suggest to Nicodemus that he needed to be born again was a kind of an insult, for Jesus is implying that Nicodemus was outside of the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus displays a little puzzlement and frustration with Jesus when he asks how it would be possible for someone like him to be born again. Would he have to enter into his mother’s womb a second time to be born a second time? He seems to be implying that he doesn’t need to be reborn because he is already in the community. A rebirth would make no sense to him.

Reading this exchange in the English causes us to miss something that is far more evident in the Greek. The Greek word for “again” is more commonly understood as “from above.” While both understandings are equally valid, the more likely understanding is that Jesus meant “born from above,” but Nicodemus heard “born again,” perhaps because he did not want to admit that he needed something more than just his birth and his obedience to God’s commands to become part of God’s kingdom. It seems that Nicodemus is not willing to admit that it was not his own work that made him part of God’s kingdom but rather it was God’s work as God caused the new birth.

As the conversation continues, it becomes evident that Jesus was thinking of the more common understanding “from above” while Nicodemus decided to hear “again.” But what Jesus was saying to Nicodemus is this: being born into the covenant community and living obediently to God’s commands doesn’t make you part of God’s kingdom. What needs to happen is something that God does to you, not that you do yourself. Nicodemus needed to be born “from above” meaning that God had to act upon his life in such a way that he was included in the kingdom. In other words, inclusion in the kingdom is God’s action, not ours, meaning that all of Nicodemus’ striving to be the possible Pharisee he could be was for nothing, at least as far as becoming a faithful citizen of God’s kingdom is concerned.

Jesus explains a few moments later that flesh gives birth to flesh and spirit gives birth to spirit. In other words, all the human efforts that Nicodemus might put into being included in God’s kingdom do not result in him becoming part of the spiritual kingdom of God. Only that which is spiritual (not fleshly) can give bring about spiritual birth. Thus, it is only by the work of the Holy Spirit that we can be born into the spiritual kingdom of God.

What Jesus has done in his conversation is make being part of God’s kingdom an impossibility for all human beings if it is up to them. For a Pharisee that was not good news, for Nicodemus had been believing that he could, by way of his physical birth as a Jew and by being obedient to the law, become part of God’s kingdom. Of all the people who lived in Jesus’ time, the Pharisees were the most likely to have been the ones who were part of God’s kingdom. And Jesus has, in effect, told Nicodemus that not even he, a leading Pharisee, was able to accomplish that.

It is in this context that John, the one who records this conversation, gives us the solution to the problem: God loved the world so much that he sent his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (which, in John’s gospel, is equivalent to being part of God’s kingdom). As John explains further, light has come into the darkness, and by that light we can “see” the kingdom of God, to use Jesus’ earlier words. To become part of God’s kingdom is not something that Nicodemus could accomplish through his good works and by the good fortune of being born to the right parents. Nicodemus had to accept the work of Jesus who was raised up on the cross as being that one thing that would cause him to be born anew from above.

Nicodemus, it becomes evident, did believe in Jesus, for we see him participating in the burial of Jesus, something that he would not have done if he had thought that Jesus was not from God. I am fairly certain that we will see Nicodemus the Pharisee in heaven. The same can be said for all who believe in Jesus.