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GOD REVEALS HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS : TO COMMEND HIMSELF ABOVE ALL OTHERSEXODUS 20:3INTRODUCTION We begin this week to consider each of the 10 commandments in turn. We are going to cover the first three commandments before Christmas and then we will pick up with number 4 the first week of February. I want to begin each week by relating one of the principles that govern how we are to interpret the 10 Commandments. I made clear last week that the 10 commandments are different from all of the other commandments contained in the Bible. They are at the head of all God’s commands and all other biblical commands derive from or are based upon these commands. This week I want to point out that each of the commandments, whether they are stated positively or negatively, necessarily teach both what we are to avoid and what we are to do. In other words, every commandment tells us what God requires and what he forbids. We can see this first of all in that 8 of the commandments are stated in the negative (You shall not) and two (4 & 5) are stated in the positive (You shall). Second, it is obvious that each of the commands contain both what is required and what is forbidden because there are numerous occasions when the same commands are repeated in the opposite form. If you just consider this first commandment you can see this clearly. Dozens of times God repeats the command to not have any other gods. Often in these commands he then goes on to say that we are to have only one god. For example in Deuteronomy 13:1-5, which we had read for us earlier, says that when a false teacher tells us to go after other gods we are not to listen to him and so worship a false god but rather we are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice.” In other words, the negative command to not have other gods is immediately followed by the positive command to have only the true and living God. In addition all the words used to tell us what not to do with other gods, such as “do not worship, obey, bow down to, love, serve, etc. other gods” are all used on other occasions to tell us what to do with the true God. Deuteronomy 10:12-13 says, “And now O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to love him, to walk in all his ways, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, etc.” Thus it is with all the commandments, whether they are stated negatively, “You shall not murder” or positively, “Honor your father and mother,” all of these commandments tell us what not to do and what we are to do. This first commandment is not only first in chronology but it stands as first in priority. It forms the foundation upon which all the other commandments are based. In the prophets, when they give the reasons for why God is destroying Israel, the violation of this commandment is most often mentioned. In 2 Kings 17 the final destruction of the northern kingdom, Israel is recounted and then the explanation is given as to why God sent the Assyrian army to destroy Israel and to carry all the inhabitants into exile. This is the reason that is given: “When the Lord made a covenant with the Israelites, he commanded them: ‘Do not worship any other gods or bow down to them, serve them or sacrifice to them. But the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt with mighty power and outstretched arm, is the one you must worship. To him you shall bow down and to him you shall offer sacrifices…. Do not worship other gods… Rather, worship the Lord your God…’ They would not listen, however, but persisted in their former practices. Even while these people were worshipping the Lord, they were serving their idols.” The ultimate reason that God destroyed Israel was that they broke the first commandment. What the first commandment tells us is that God is intolerant. He demands that human beings worship him alone. His intolerance is severe. He threatens the most awful punishments upon all who worship other gods and/or do not worship him. He is jealous for his own reputation and glory. His first allegiance is to himself and he will not tolerate any who prefer other gods to him or who do not give to him the honor he is due. As he says in Exodus 34:14, “Do not worship any other god, for Yahweh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” Or again as he says in Isaiah 48:11, “For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this. How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another.” This first commandment is related to God’s ultimate purpose in the universe. God has done, is doing and will do all that he does for one grand and ultimate purpose and that is to display the greatness and the glory of his own being. God is first in his own affections. He loves himself above all others and is first, above all else committed to magnifying and preserving his own reputation in the universe. This is the universal declaration of the Bible. Whether it be in his creation: “The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hand;” or his salvation, “In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ…to the praise of his glorious grace…”, God does all things for the glory of his name. We are not first in his affections. He is first in his affections. It is right for God to love himself above all else. If he was not first in his own affections he would be an idolater. He would be unrighteous and unholy. Righteousness consists in loving that which is supremely valuable and God only is supremely valuable. In this commandment he requires that we join him in his great ambition, in his magnificent obsession. In this first commandment he requires that we discover and believe and act upon the ultimate truth in the universe: God himself is infinitely glorious and therefore infinitely desirable. He is better than everything and he commands that we live as if he is better than everything and everyone. In the first commandment we discover that… MAIN POINT God will tolerate no competitors, therefore, I. We must reject every false description of God and embrace only true descriptions of God This commandment tells us that we are to have no other God before “me”. Who is the me? Maybe that sounds like a dumb question but it is the most relevant question we can ask in our culture. As I have told you on many occasions we live in a society in which fully 70% of the people we live and work with do not believe that there are any absolute truths. The people you live and work with and go to school with believe that what I believe is true for me and what you believe is true for you but there is nothing outside of us that is objectively true. There is no ultimate truth to which all of us must submit. Most people believe what the retired Episcopal priest told me almost 30 years ago, “It does not matter what a person believes, it only matters that a person believes.” Our culture believes that sincerity is the only thing that matters when it comes to faith in God and commitment to moral principles. Our culture is absolutely convinced that every individual human being has not only the right to believe what he or she wants to believe but whatever each person believes is true. The worst offence you can give in our culture is to tell someone he is wrong in what he believes and that you are right. This view of reality is radically affecting the church. Growing numbers of evangelical Christians are unwilling to say that explicit faith in Jesus Christ is the only grounds upon which a person can be made right with God. I have no doubt that many of you have a hard time believing and an even harder time saying that Christ is the only way to know God and that all who do not trust in Jesus Christ during this life will go to an eternal hell. To our ears, having grown up in this relativistic, post-modern culture, that sounds like the worst sort of bigotry and prejudice. This commandment says that our culture is wrong. God is a person and he has characteristics and likes and dislikes. He exists objectively outside of us and independently of what we believe about him. When he commands that we have no god but him he is telling us that we must think about him as he actually is and not any old way we want to think about him. The majority of people in the world say that they believe in God. However, the god they believe in is not the God who gave this commandment and therefore they believe in a false god, they believe in another god besides the one who actually exists. In thinking false thoughts about God they are breaking this commandment. At whatever point my conception of God does not match his actual, objective reality—I am breaking this command, just by thinking about him wrong. I think that everyone sitting in this room has a hard time believing that having wrong thoughts about God is truly evil. It’s not hard for us to embrace the fact that murder is evil or that the betrayal of adultery is evil. However to say that it is evil and deserving of an eternal hell to believe that God is not a Trinity as our Moslem, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Mormon and Jehovah Witness friends believe just feels extreme doesn’t it? Again, it sounds so intolerant. I want to use an illustration I have used 3 or 4 times in the last eight years in sermons and I have used dozens of times in personal and small group discussions to help us understand why it is so immoral to believe erroneous things about God. Those of you who know the illustration, don’t just turn me off but seek to learn how to tell the story so you can use it when talking with others. Ask a “volunteer” to describe their mother to me. What kind of person is she? What are some of the things she likes and doesn’t like? What are her hobbies? I’m really sorry to have to be the one to tell you this but you’re mom is not a very good person. She is one of the biggest drug dealers in Janesville. She has been responsible for much of the crime in our city as she gets people hooked on drugs and then they are forced to pay for their habit by stealing. She’s the worst kind of drug dealer because she seeks to hook children as young as 10 on drugs. She does this by making cookies for the neighbor kids and for kids on the way home from school with drugs in them so the children get hooked on the drugs and have to come back to her. Her favorite hobby is mailing pipe bombs to people. She’s such a menace that I’ve paid for a full page ad in the Gazette to let the whole city know how evil she is and I’m going on WCLO tomorrow morning in an interview to make sure everyone is made aware of how dangerous she is. If I really believed this and was really going to do this, how would you feel? What would you do about me? Let’s say you came to me and said I was wrong in what I was saying about your mom. Here’s what I would say to you. “You’re entitled to your belief about your mom but this is what I believe is true. Who are you to say that I am wrong? Don’t you know that there are no absolute truths?” Can both you and I be correct about your mom? Can she not be a drug dealer and be a drug dealer at the same time? NO. Would it be wrong for me to spread these lies about your mom? YES. Why is it evil to believe and propagate false things about human beings but not evil to believe and propagate false things about the God who made human beings? The first commandment requires that we submit to God's descriptions of himself in the Bible. We are not to conceive of God in any way other than how he has described himself in his Word. All who believe and/or teach doctrines that describe God in erroneous ways are breaking this commandment. God will tolerate no competitors, therefore…
II. We must refuse to love and trust every false god What does it mean to have another god before God? What God is not saying is that it’s OK to worship other gods as long as we don’t worship them more than we worship him. He is not saying it is OK to be a polytheist as long as he is the most important of your gods. The preposition “before” means “in his presence” or “along with”. In other words we are to have only the true God as our God and we are to reject every false god. But again what does it mean to have another god? We are not left to our own imagination in figuring this out because as I’ve already mentioned this command is repeated scores of times in various forms and with different verbs attached to it. Here is a partial list of the things we are not to do in regard to other gods, taken from a few places in Exodus and Deuteronomy: We are not to love other gods. We are not to invoke their names. That means we are not to pray to them or call upon them for help. We are not to treat anyone or anything else as our Savior and help in time of need. We are not to fear any other god. We are not to perform acts of religious worship to false gods. We are not to cling to other gods or to follow after them or obey them. You can see from the multitude of words that are used to describe what we are not to do that this verb “have” is a loaded word. We are not just talking about the performance of religious duties or professing to believe in the false god of Jehovah Witnesses but about the affections of our heart. We are not just to refrain from going to Hindu temples and participating in their worship but we are commanded to not love and trust any false god. This raises an important question for those of us who live in a culture that is not overrun with false gods and idol worship in the classic, religious sense, like in most of the rest of the world. It is without question that becoming an adherent to a non-Christian religion like Islam or a heretical Christian sect like the Mormons is clearly a violation of this commandment. But are we only forbidden from loving, trusting, etc. specifically religious deities? Throughout the history of the church it has been acknowledged that it is possible to “have other gods” without engaging in specifically religious worship. Origen, a preeminent pastor and theologian from the 2 nd century of the church said, “What each one honors before all else, what before all things he admires and loves, this for him is God.” Martin Luther, the great Reformer wrote, “Whatever your heart clings to and relies upon, that is properly your God.” Matthew Henry, the great Puritan pastor said, “…whatever is esteemed or loved, feared or served, delighted in or depended upon, more than God, that (whatever it is) we do in effect make a god of.” Thomas Watson in his exhaustive discussion of the commandments says, “To trust in anything more than God is to make it a god.” He then lists riches, governments, armies, social stability, wisdom, religious activity, pleasure and children as possible “other gods.” The apostle Paul says that for non-believers, “their god is their belly.” Non-believers serve their physical desires and appetites and thus show that they believe a comfortable life on earth is a god worth serving. Paul also calls a desire to be rich, “idolatry”, i.e., the worship of a false god. Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters, either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” In effect Jesus says that money is your god when you serve it, that is, when you invest your time, creativity and energy in the pursuit of acquiring more money or protecting what you have. God’s condemnation of Israel wasn’t that they never worshipped him but that they robbed him of his glory by trusting, fearing and serving other gods along with him. This is the danger that we face most of all. Especially in America it is more than possible for us to be people who profess to cling to Christ but in reality we are trusting in another god. How do we know if we love or trust in another god? I think there are a couple of ways we can evaluate if we are trusting, loving, serving, worshipping, etc. another god. First, we can evaluate ourselves in these ways: What arouses my emotions, especially the emotions of fear, hope, joy and love? What do I look forward to and anticipate most? What do I spend my time doing? What do I spend my money on? You can be sure that the things that excite you or scare you, the things that you look forward to and spend your time and money on are the things that compete with the true God for your heart. Second, probably the most effective means of discovering if you “have another god” is to have the object of your affection and trust taken from you. When you lose the respect of your children or when you lose your job or your child or your spouse or your friend, then what happens to you will reveal to you what it is that you are really trusting in. It is one of the chief reasons God sends trouble into our lives and takes things and people away from us—so that we will be able to tell if we have any gods before him. It is a great mercy for God to take away the objects of our affections so that we can learn whether we have him as our God or if someone or something else is our god. God will tolerate no competitors, therefore…
III. We must joyfully love and trust only the true God This negative prohibition entails a positive admonition. We are to fear, love, serve, cling to, follow, bow down to, worship, trust, pray to the God who made the heavens and the earth and who is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and whose name is Yahweh and who has eternally existed as Father, Son and Spirit, one God yet three persons forever. We break this command not only when we trust someone or something else besides him but also when we are indifferent to him. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength. God will not be disregarded by those he made and sustains. He is not interested in lukewarm acknowledgement but demands white hot worship. He demands from us the same intensity of emotion and action that we invest in our hobbies and our shopping and our TV watching and our parenting and our love making and our cooking and our house remodeling. I want to examine just two of the verbs that are used to state this command in the affirmative in order to have a fuller understanding of what is being commanded in the first commandment. We are regularly told to "fear the Lord our God." Fearing God is the beginning and foundation of a wisely lived life as the Proverbs say dozens of times. Anyone who has been around the church for any length of time has heard, on more than one occasion that this does not mean that we are to fear God as in be terrified of him as we would when faced with some overwhelming danger, like a hurricane or a murderer. Rather we have been told that it means to have a reverence or respect for him. I do agree that when a person is in Christ his or her fear of God is altered because John says in his letter, "There is no fear in love. Perfect love drives out fear." In the context of 1 John 4 the fear we no longer have when we are in Christ is the fear of punishment. I do not fear going to hell when I am in Christ. However, Jesus commands his disciples, including us, in Luke 12:4-5, "Do not fear those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who after the killing of the body has power to throw you into hell. Yes I tell you, fear him." When we are in Christ we do not fear going to hell but we still fear him who has the power to throw people into hell. The fear we have is like that of a person who is in a secure building with a generator and plenty of food and water while a hurricane demolishes everything outside his safe haven. He doesn't fear personally perishing but he is terrified of the hurricane because he knows if he stepped for a moment outside, he would be swept away. We are to fear God for his perfect holiness and justice, which burns up all that is unholy and unjust. As the author to the Hebrews says, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Only fools do not fear God. He is overwhelming in his holiness and in his wrath and in his justice. If you do not fear God you are breaking the first commandment. In Deuteronomy 10:20 we are commanded to "hold fast to the Lord our God." This is the same word that is used in Genesis 2:24 to describe marriage. "For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh." It is the word for being faithful to, being committed to, being loyal to a person. Think with me for just a moment about what it means for a husband to "hold fast to his wife." There are both things he does not do and things that he does. He is not flirtatious in his dealings with other women. He is careful to not say or do anything with another woman that should only be said or done with his wife. He fiercely fights to avoid anything that would arouse feelings in him towards another woman that should only be directed towards his wife. He does not speak ill of his wife either to others or to her. He defends her honor against all who would seek to dishonor her. He seeks to communicate his loyalty to her by his hard work and his tender words. He regularly communicates to her that she is the only one whom he loves. If she tells him that his behavior or language makes her doubt his loyalty he endeavors with all his might to change that behavior or language because he yearns for her to be confident, always of his loyalty to her. This is the way that God requires that we treat him. We are to guard our hearts so that they are not attracted to any other lover. We speak well of God at all times both to others and to him. We regularly communicate to him that we love him only. We defend his honor at all times and aim always to think well of him. If you do not hold fast to God as a husband holds fast to his wife, then you are breaking this commandment. God will tolerate no competitors, therefore…
APPLICATION Each week I want to end by applying the commandment to us. The primary reason that God gave the 10 Commandments is to condemn us, to show us and convince of our great guilt. Probably you've noticed many who are putting signs in their yards with the 10 Commandments on them. I understand the motivation to protest our cultures rejection of God's standards but it is actually rather humorous for people to put up these commands in their yards or worse yet, hang cross stitched copies in their living rooms. It's like someone who is speeding down the interstate having a bumper sticker that is a copy of the state law defining the speed limit and listing the penalties for breaking the law. It's like the bank robber wearing a lapel pin with the state law condemning bank robbery and stating the penalties for robbery. It's foolish and it's arrogant to act as though God means for these commandments to be friendly, for they are not. The reason this first commandment is not friendly to anyone sitting in this room is because you and I have many other gods besides God. We have other gods by our wrong thoughts of God. No one in here has a perfect conception of the God who actually exists. All of us conceive of God in erroneous ways. All of us love, fear, cling to, serve other things and persons with far greater delight and discipline than we love, fear, cling to and serve God himself. You know how to be loyal to a wife, but you can't be loyal to God. You know how to trust your bank account, but you don't trust the one who owns the universe to care for you. You fear the police and you fear someone taking your child, but you have no fear of God in your heart. You are passionate in following the rules of fantasy football but you never give a thought to whether or not you are following God's rules. God does not appear to us as glorious and attractive but as a nothing, a nobody. You who are indifferent to God, do you think it a hard thing that God should be indifferent to your cries for mercy on the Day of Judgment? You who are bored by God, do you think he will take interest in you when you stand before his throne of judgment? You are so delighted with Xbox and can't wait to have one of your own but you fight with your parents about coming to church and never look forward to family prayer, do you think that God is obligated to warmly welcome you into heaven? This commandment stands above as a massive mountain of condemnation before which we ought to cower and tremble. Then consider that Jesus Christ perfectly fulfilled this command. He always loved God and never loved any other person or created object more than or apart from his love for his Father. He never had a wrong thought of God, nor did he ever worship anyone or anything but God. He never delighted in a human being instead of delighting in his Father. His food, his life was obedience to the God whom he trusted and prayed to and was daily loyal to. This perfect Christ took upon himself the infinite wrath of a holy God that was due to all those sinners who trust in him. The great evil of believing in false gods and loving other gods which deserves infinite and eternal destruction was atoned for by Christ. Look at Christ and see the glorious mercy and grace of this holy God and have your hearts be melted by love for him. Christ's perfect life and his atoning death are applied to all who have been born again by the Spirit of God and thus are trusting in Christ. The Spirit that God has placed within us now desires to fear, love, be loyal to, depend upon, pray to and worship this great God. We yearn for that day when our faith will be sight and we will be taken up with the glory of God and our hearts will no longer be divided, nor distracted by the gaudy trinkets of sin and the pleasures of this life. We see God by the power of the Spirit and as we behold his glory we are daily being transformed into that glory. We taste in small ways the love and admiration that the Triune God has for himself and in this is our delight. We mourn and grieve over our hard and indifferent hearts and we plead that God would, by his Spirit, increase our pleasure in him and kill our desires for this world and the lusts that are in it. All who trust in Christ are growing in their love for God and their delight in his worship. All who profess to trust Christ but have no taste for God, nor concern for their lukewarm affections, nor care to learn more of the glory of God are but pretenders and hypocrites. Christ died to bring us to God and God to us. He died so that obedience to this first and greatest commandment would become the chief passion of our lives. © Copyright
2005 John Swanson.
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