There’s an important truth about humanity: Everybody has a God in their lives.  Everybody worships.  And if a person doesn’t worship God, he’ll worship some-one or some-thing else.  It’s built into our nature.  We all naturally have some thing in our lives that is more fundamental, more important, more stable than anything else: a lens through which we look at the entire world.  A source of hope and meaning for our lives.  For some people, it’s money.  If I just have enough money, my life will be happy and peaceful: I trust in money to make me happy.  For a lot of people, it’s comfort.  If I can just avoid discomfort and maximize my pleasure, my life will be happy and peaceful: I trust in comfort to make me happy.  For some people, it’s the government.  If we just get the right elected officials and enact the right policies, my life will be happy and peaceful: I trust in human progress to make me happy.  

But of course, the truth is: money is a good thing; it’s an engine of doing good and living well, but it won’t make you happy, not for long at least.  And comfort is a good thing: it’s easier to live a happy productive life if you enjoy life and aren’t constantly fighting pain and discomfort: but struggle is a part of life and we really can’t avoid it, at least not forever.  And human government can occasionally do great and magnanimous things, but every politician’s promise of creating some great earthly utopia is always a disappointment.  None of these things can hold up under the pressure of being the most important thing in our lives: they collapse under that weight and leave us disappointed and wandering.  But if Christ is the King of our lives, if Christ is the King of our hearts, if Christ is the most important thing to us, if he is the lens through which we see the world: then we can use money without becoming enslaved to it; we can enjoy the legitimate pleasures of life without making them what we live for; we can engage with society and civic life and try to make our world a better place, without feeling like life is a failure if things don’t always work out perfectly.  

Now, unlike these other things which invariably disappoint: we can actually trust Christ.  We can actually make him the most important thing in our lives.  We can actually entrust our happiness and contentment and our sense of meaning and purpose to him.  Because he is Lord, and he is God, and he is always victorious.  One of the problems with everything else in life, is that eventually failure catches up.  You can work for decades on your 401K, but from time to time, the stock market crashes.  You can be as healthy as an ox, but eventually you’ll get sick.  You can pour your heart and mind into politics, but eventually the party you prefer will lose an election.  But Christ is never on the wrong side of history.  Even when they murdered him, even when absolute disaster struck, when his enemies had done their absolute worst, the most powerful attack possible: bringing death to the source of life: it turned into the greatest victory imaginable.  Death was swallowed up in the victory of Christ.  Well, that’s someone you can worship.  That’s someone who can be more fundamental, more important, more stable than anything else in your life.  He can be, he must be the lens through which you look at the entire world.  

This leads us right to the very first Commandment given by God to Moses: “I am the Lord your God, and you shall have no strange gods before me.”  The First Commandment really boils down to simply just, “God is God.”  That’s really what the First Commandment means: “God is God.”  Although it’s a simple idea, it is by no means trivial.  It’s a critical reminder: don’t make money your king.  Don’t make comfort your king.  Don’t make the president your king.  Let Christ reign as King in your mind, in your heart, and in your soul.  He will never disappoint, he will never fail, he will never let you down.  Christ is King.  We worship him.  We serve him.  And we love him.