Loving the gift or the giver?

I love the Lake District. I like to go there and admire the splendour, the majesty the beauty of the fells, the mountains, the lakes and rivers.

When we go there, my wife and I are moved by the fact that we know the creator of this magnificence - because he has revealed himself to us. He is our Father and he loves us. We take time to worship and praise him and to draw near to him and bring to him our cares. We are conscious however that whilst many thousands of people share our feelings about the area, they do not know the God who made it. However, things I have read and heard over the last few days have arrested my mind and caused me to take stock.

I have been reading Calvin’s Institutes and he writes this:
“Bright, however, as is the manifestation which God gives both of himself and his immortal kingdom in the mirror of his works, so great is our stupidity, so dull are we in regard to these bright manifestations, that we derive no benefit from them. For in regard to the fabric and admiral arrangement of the universe, how few of us are there who, in lifting our eyes to the heavens, or looking abroad on the various regions of the earth, ever think of the Creator? Do we not rather overlook him and sluggishly content ourselves with a view of his works? And then in regard to supernatural events, though these are occurring every day, how few are there who ascribe them to the ruling providence of God – how many who imagine that they are the casual results produced by the blind evolutions of the wheel of chance?”

He goes on:
“We are thus led to form some impressions of Deity, we immediately fly off to carnal dreams and depraved fictions and so by our vanity corrupt heavenly truth. This far, indeed, we differ from each other, in that everyone appropriates to himself some peculiar error; but we are all alike in this, that we substitute monstrous fictions for the living and true God – a disease not confined to obtuse and vulgar minds, but affecting the noblest and those who, in other respects, are singularly acute.”

In these days when we are being bombarded by the thoughts of Darwin’s devotees, we tend to think that only people who are not Christians would think this way, but I think Calvin is saying that even Christians fall into the trap of just seeing the works rather than the creator. Or maybe even forming a false impression of the living God by not seeing how great he is.

Yesterday I listened to a John Piper message from a 2008 conference and he made reference to human depravity – which impacts how we think of God. Even believers. He pointed out that it is possible for us to prefer the nature and the glory of the creation over the nature and glory of the Creator. That we prefer his gifts over Him. Think about it!

This may not reveal itself in our love of the beauty of creation rather than our love for the Creator, but there are other things we may prefer. I am preaching tomorrow on Hebrews 13:5+6 “Keep your lives free from the love of money……” Perhaps it is more likely that we will prefer the nature and glory of money to the Creator. That it is money that has pride of place in our heart. Or perhaps we would have another human being as the centre of our affections, rather than the Creator.

We need God, through the Spirit, to continually do his work of grace in our lives so that He is the centre of our affections. That love for him guides our thoughts and determines our actions.