My Treasured Possession

It is a major understatement to say that my world changed when my son was born. Like many fathers before me, I can remember with absolute clarity the first time I laid eyes on my child—the first time I held him in my arms—the first time he “urped”all over my shirt. A profound shift takes place when there he is or there she is, and this little person now depends on you for everything! You look down at that little one, and the phrase “my treasured possession” would certainly be appropriate. And I think that in particular a father knows that as that little one grows up, it’s not going to be all warm fuzzies and Hallmark greeting card feelings. There will be challenges to rules, arguments, disobedience, rebelliousness, and those must be met with discipline. None of that changes the love that started to flow in you the moment you became a parent.
I bring this up because I believe it relates directly to what the Lord God says in Exodus 19—today’s Old Testament Reading. Those of us who have been blessed to be parents, in a way that is ever so small compared to God, may be able to see where God is coming from, and catch the depth of love issuing from God’s heart. Even if you’re not a parent, but there’s someone in your life that you treasure, you can understand the affection that God is expressing here. God says to Moses, “This is what I want you to say to my people: You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” The Father’s heart is revealed. “Look at all I’ve done for you,” He says. “Keep living in relationship to me, and I’ll do even greater things than these!” Pardon the pun, but God the Father is making an offer that couldn’t really be refused, could it?
However, there is great risk in expressing love to someone else. There is great risk in calling someone else “my treasured possession”—namely, they might not treasure you back. The love you give may not be returned in kind. It’s that thought that chills the blood of every godly parent I know. Whether or not this troubled the Lord God is impossible to say. What we can say is that He didn’t wait around to strike Egypt and part the waters of the Red Sea until He was asked. He didn’t poll the Israelites to see if they wanted their chains broken. He just did it for them, because He loved them, and brought them out of slavery into freedom. With all the power available to God, that was no problem. But He didn’t use His power to force His people to love Him in return. This was the risk God took—He did everything in His power to demonstrate His love for His people, but then He left the ball in their court. “After all you’ve seen me do for you,” God said, “just obey me—trust me—follow me—and you will be my treasured possession.” Talk about being swept off your feet! And according to Exodus 19, the people were! When Moses reported what the Lord had said they responded by saying, “We will do everything the Lord has said.” And they all lived happily ever after.
Oh, wait. That’s not what my Bible says. It says that while God was giving Moses the commandments for his people to follow, they messed up. They gave their love to a calf made out of gold, and indulged their senses in pagan ways of worship. To call it a slap in the face doesn’t quite say enough. God’s risk didn’t seem to have paid off. The people He wanted as his treasured possession evidently didn’t really want Him. And as hard as it is for us to imagine, that hurt the Lord God Almighty. It also made him angry. Quite frankly, God’s thought in Exodus 32 is to destroy his unfaithful people, and if you’ve every felt the bitter pain of rejection, perhaps you can relate to that. God’s thought was to destroy; to punish; somebody was going to pay for this.
And somebody did. But it was not somebody who deserved it. Just the opposite. Rather than wipe out the people who had cheated on Him, God took another risk, and this risk was even crazier than the first. Yes, somebody was going to be destroyed. That somebody would be God’s own Son.
Has the Gospel ever lost some of it’s “wow” factor for you? Has the good news of Jesus ever started to lose it’s “oomph” or impact in your life? If so, then just think in these terms: imagine that person who is your treasured possession, that person your cherish and can’t imagine living without, and now imagine that in order to right a huge wrong, you’re going to have to punish—more than that, execute—your loved one.
Or think of it in these terms: You hear on the evening news the story of an extremely deadly virus sweeping the planet. It’s only a matter of time before it hits home. High-ranking doctors discover that your “treasured possession” person could produce a vaccine that would literally save the world. The only catch is, they would die in the process of creating the vaccine. Would you sign off on the procedure?
God the Father did just that—and that’s the gospel we preach and believe in. The deadly virus is the virus of sin, and it infects us all. The virus of sin makes us all unfaithful, looking for a god that will give us what we want. It makes all of us people who say “We will do everything the Lord has said,” and then we turn around and dance before the golden calf on the way to our graves. Without waiting to be asked, God signed off on the procedure that would create the vaccine against sin, the procedure that would kill his Son. He went ahead with it, still hopeful that there were people who would take this vaccine and live; still hopeful that there would be people who would look to His Son and receive forgiveness through His Blood; still hopeful that He could gather a people to himself that would be his treasured possession, as well as a holy nation and a kingdom of priests; a people that would deliver God’s love to the world.
So what do you think—was God the Father’s risk worth it?