The Things of First Importance

I heard a sermon yesterday that started with an important distinction--everything in the Bible is important, but everything is not equally important. Everything in the Bible is important, but there are things in the Bible that are more important and things in the Bible that are less important.

You may not have thought that way before. But there are a number of passages in 1 Samuel, Isaiah, Micah, Hosea and other places in the Bible where God talks about the most important things. For example, in Hosea 6 and Micah 6, the people were taking care of sacrifices but they were neglecting justice and mercy. In 1 Samuel 15, Samuel tells Saul "to obey is better than sacrifice." It's not that sacrifices and religious rituals were unimportant. It's that justice and mercy, obedience to the big things were more important.

When you want to honor God in your workplace, if you look at the list of labels to the left, you might think there's a lot of things to do. Attitude, ethics, honesty, importance of work, perspective, etc. But really, it comes down to two things. Jesus explains in Matthew 22 that the greatest commands, the most important things, are to love God and love people. There were over 600 laws in Jesus' time. And beyond those, they had laws about laws. But the most important things are to love God and love others. Everything else is subordinate to those. Everything "hangs" on those, to use Jesus' words in the NIV translation.

It's easy to feel overwhelmed when you think about all that God asks of you in your workplace. But really, you need to focus on two things. As you look at the week ahead of you, don't worry about the details. Instead, focus on the big picture: love God and love other people. If you get those right, the details will take care of themselves.