In this series, I take our law homily from our church gathering each week (The law homily is where we read from the law of God and let His law examine our hearts so that we can be a tender-hearted and repenting people), and I post them here for your edification. Here is this week’s law homily on the prohibition against mental idolatry. 

You shall have no other gods before Me. - Exodus 20:3

THE LAW TO A FORGETFUL PEOPLE

The entire purpose of Biblical law is that God entered into a relationship with forgetful people. The law of God does not exist because human minds are perfectly fixated on the triune God in purity to know Him. If they were, a law would be unnecessary. The law also does not exist because we naturally submit ourselves to systems of morality that flow directly from His character and holiness. We are not adept at living out any code of ethics with consistency, much less something as beautiful and holy as the law of God. No. The law exists to prop up forgetful people who exist in perpetual forgetfulness. We forget who God is. We forget how we are to live in light of who He is. And we need the law of God as a tutor to point us to Christ. 

This is why God repeatedly admonishes the people of Israel to remember the law, remember His statutes, remember His precepts, remember His promises. Why? Because if we are not actively being reminded to remember them we will inevitably forget them. That is simply who we are in our character and nature. This is as true to the human condition as a goldfish needing to be submerged in water to breathe or birds needing wings to fly. Without the commandment to remember the law of God, we would always forget His precepts. But it goes even deeper than that. 

FORGETFULNESS AND DISMEMBERING 

When we forget who God is or what His law says, we are not only having a lapse of the mind but we are being dismembered from the true knowledge of God. If "re"-" membering" is about us being "membered" back again, restored to a former station, then forgetting is akin to kind of "dis"-" membering". If human beings were created to be in a relationship with God, made in the image of God, made to be members of God's covenant people, made to have minds that are fixated on knowing Him and pleasing Him, then forgetfulness is the bloody machete that dismembers us from Him. Forgetfulness is, at least partly, the sin that caused Eve to plunge her teeth into the dragon's fruit. And forgetfulness caused Adam to stand by and watch it happen. And it was forgetfulness that dismembered them from the Almighty, dismembered them from their paradise home, and dismembered them from a state of perfection into the estate of sin and misery.

Now, while we know the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in His finished work to save us, a kind of dismembering occurs, even with us, when we forget our God's precepts, plans, purposes, and promises. We are not dismembered from the family of God because of the finished work of Christ. Praise God for that! But, even as believers, paid for by Jesus, indwelled with the Spirit of God, we can still be dismembered from the experience of intimacy with God through unrepentant sin. We are not dismembered from His love, salvation, and grace (Romans 8:1), but we can be dismembered from the awareness, contentment, and perception of His love and care for our souls.

REMEMBERING AND BLESSINGS 

When we forget this command (to have no other gods before Him, in His presence) and we live ignorantly in rebellion, there are all kinds of ways that we become relationally dismembered, cut up, and cut off from the gifts and blessings of God has for us in our disobedience. This is why remembering is so important because when you remember His plans, purposes, precepts, and promises when you set your mind to remember what God has said in His Word and to meditate on it in your heart, you are not only engaging in a helpful cognitive discipline, your mind, heart, and body are being Re-membered back to Him. 

If you are a member of the body of Christ, and forgetfulness for the things of God has caused distance between you and your creator, depression and anxiety in your life, and discouragement for the things that are ahead, then what you need is to be re-membered back to God. Not in a salvific sense. You cannot lose your salvation if you are indeed in Him. I am talking about being re-membered, re-knit, re-connected, back to Him experientially, relationally, emotionally, cognitively, and bodily. I am talking about the remembering a husband does after an argument, where he remembers his love for his wife and then reconciles with her to restore the relationship. For all of us, our forgetfulness has caused division and separation in our experience of knowing God. This is why we are called to remember His law, obey It, and meditate on it day and night. Because when we remember it, it re-members us to Him. 

Today, apologize to God for your forgetfulness. Apologize for your perpetual tendency to forget His law, commands, and promises and to float adrift in a sea of forgetfulness. As you do that, also ask the Lord your God for help in the discipline of remembering. Pray that the Lord would restore and re-member you back to Him, in mind, heart, and body, so that the joy of your salvation would be enflamed and overflowing. 

Soli Deo Gloria