Worship Me For Who I Am Series

AM Sermon preached at Central Christian Church January 21, 2007

God’s Top Ten sermon series 3rd sermon Worship Me For Who I AM

(2nd Commandment)

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Imagine this scene---- A small simple wedding in a country church. Everyone’s arrived dressed in their best outfits. The preacher and the groom have taken their places on the stage. Suddenly the music on the organ hits this loud crescendo; everyone rises to their feet as the bride makes her way to the front. She appears so happy she’s practically glowing. The groom is all smiles. There’s the traditional giving of the bride which is followed by a brief sermon on the joys of marriage and love. Then the preacher leads the groom in his vow ----Mike, do you now commit yourself to Sarah and take her as your wife, promising to love and cherish her, protect her and provide for her, guard her reputation, give her your undying love and remain faithful to her until you are separated by death? The groom looks lovingly into his brides eyes and says enthusiastically, “I do!” Then the preacher turns to the woman and says and now for your vow…but she interrupts him and says “if you don’t mind. I’ve written my own vow.” “By all means,” the preacher says, “go ahead.” She begins to gush, “Mike, honey, I love you. I am so looking forward to our future together. You’ve always been there for me. You’ve picked me up when I was down, encouraged me when I felt like quitting, you’re my hero and my friend I promise to love you and stand by you and support you the rest of my life….there’s only one thing I ask of you one day a year I want to be single again…you know I want to be able to spend time with old boyfriends, go guy hunting, clubbing, whatever comes up for the day….so what do you think” Can you imagine the groom’s reaction to such a crazy proposal? No groom, no bride wants to a part time commitment from their spouse. They want full devotion to their marriage. {NOTE: for those reading this at Sermon Central---there’s a video clip available showing this very thing at the Sermon Spice web site}

Think about it. You married ladies, you don’t want your husband checking out the SI swimsuit issue----and you don’t want him spending time in an internet chat room with another woman----and you don’t want him carrying around the picture of another woman in his wallet---do you? Of course not. And guys, we don’t want our wife calling up and talking to other men on the phone---and we don’t want her flirting with a co-worker and we don’t want her videotaping the Mr. Olympian body-building contest so she can watch it again and again---do we? No, absolutely not.. Why---because we don’t want anything creeping in that might gradually steal our spouse devotion away from us.

The same is true of God. He wants our full devotion in our relationship to Him. He doesn’t want us to worship or toy around with any other god. Last week we saw as we looked at the first commandment that God wants to be numero uno in our lives and the sole occupant of the throne of our heart---and He wants us to worship only Him----no other gods before or besides me---that was the heart of the first commandment. Today as we look closely at the second commandment we’ll find that God not only wants us to worship Him alone, He wants us to worship Him in the right way and He wants us to worship Him for Who He is.

Let’s look at the second commandment and the verses joined with it.

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4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.

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God says in this second commandment, “don’t make idols. And don’t bow down to them or worship them.” We’ve all seen pictures of ancient idols and the idols people of other religions bow down to. [SLIDE] We’ve seen the soap stone laxmiji or something like it; [SLIDE] we’ve seen the Sphinx; [SLIDE] we’ve seen pictures of the goddess Durga or other ancient goddess statues; [SLIDE] we’ve seen pictures and heard stories about Buddha; [SLIDE] possibly you’ve seen pictures of or heard of Ganesh, the Hindu’s god of prosperity---[SLIDE] many of us have studied Greek mythology and we heard how in Greek Mythology, Athena was the daughter of Zeus and Metis. And as the story goes Zeus swallowed Metis while she was pregnant with Athena. Even though Zeus was a god, he didn’t know the sex of the child Metis was carrying but he feared it might be a boy and he had found out that if they had a son, their son would be mightier than him. So Zeus swallowed Metis before she could give birth. Soon after, Zeus was plagued with killer headaches and Hephaestus the Smith God opened his head to see what was going on and if he could help relieve Zeus’ pain. And when Zeus’ head was opened, out popped Athena, full grown and ready for battle! [BLANK SLIDE]