Our Value System

It’s easy to dispose of a spork. Yes, a spork, the mutant half spoon, half fork you get from many fast food restaurants to eat your meal on the go. The spork only holds value to us for a short time. Once the meal is over, all value the spork once held diminishes to the point that we easily toss it in the trash.

Contemplating the value of plastic utensils is easy; things we hold more precious are difficult. When Scripture requires us not to neglect it, what it’s really saying is re-value what you’ve heard.  The bottom-line of our study in Hebrews through chapter two verse nine is this:

Jesus, the highest value in the universe, has spoken the Gospel to us, the highest value to humanity, and promises us joy, the highest value spiritually. Everything else, no matter how precious and good, pales in comparison.

Every Thanksgiving families verbalize the things for which they are thankful. Often times its things like family, health, home, employment, etc.; all things that are good and given as gifts from God. It’s right to be thankful for such.

However, the question remains, how do we value them?   In the “not neglecting so great a salvation” life, what are the pitfalls of placing the wrong value on the temporary and the eternal?

In Scripture, Jesus’ teaching is more concerned about the good things in life causing us to neglect our great salvation than any of the normal sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll choices we make.

Read Luke 14:15-24 The Parable of the Great Banquet

Focus on the excuses offered for neglecting so great a salvation. (I am saying that each of the invited guests were saying to the banquet host [God], “please excuse me from your banquet [heaven, kingdom], my heart is really elsewhere.”)

Answer these questions:

What are the objects of the excuses offered by the invited guests?

Are these objects generally considered good or evil?

What happened when the invited guests placed a value on land [home], oxen [cars and things with wheels], wife [family] higher than banquet attendance [salvation]?

This Thanksgiving, as you give thanks for precious family, home, and dining room table filled with bounty, never grant these things so much value that you treat so great a salvation like a spork.