1Then God spoke all these words: 2I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3you shall have no other gods before£ me. 4You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, 6but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation£ of those who love me and keep my commandments. 7You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. 8Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. (NRSV)
Have you seen the commercial with the 800 pound gorilla? A middle-aged couple is trying to sleep while an ape with a laptop computer talks about their retirement.
It’s a pretty silly thing for a couple to have a gorilla sitting on the edge of the bed keeping them from sleeping until they think about the problems of their retirement portfolio. But it’s a great commercial, because it pulls on the reality that people who are over 50 think a lot about retirement, yet they are almost afraid to think about retirement.
An 800 pound gorilla in the room, the picture says it all about the fear of facing our problems…Big problem…no easy solution!
Well, Houston, we have a gorilla in the room at Bethany…and at every other church in the world! It is a gorilla as big and as old as the basic problem of mankind; it goes back to the Garden of Eden. It is the problem of man telling God what he will and won’t do, instead of bowing before God in worship.
Now, even before we talk about the nature of that “gorilla in the room” here at Bethany, I want to declare up-front that the solution to the problem is found in Scripture. God’s Word is our “owner’s manual”. Whatever needs fixing in my life or yours can be found there; there is no gorilla too big for God!
Consider the Text
I am the LORD your God…you shall have no other gods…
When something is said to be “set in stone” you understand that there is no questioning, no changing! The Ten Commandments are such; they are not only set in stone, they were set there by the very finger of God. You don’t fool with that!
You don’t take the commandments of God lightly…unless, of course, you consider yourself above God! Some ignorant or foolish humans might go down that road, but I don’t know too many who would say it too loudly; underneath they fear God might be listening – they’d really be in a pickle then!
That is the very center of the first four commandments:
no other gods,
no idols,
no foul use of My name,
and keep My DAY for worship.
When God said I am the Lord, He was setting in stone the fact that there are no other gods worthy of worship. He set a fence in posts of stone. On one side of the fence are those who would serve Him and be His family; on the other side stands anyone else.
Now, it needs to be said from the outset that every person gets to choose upon which side of the fence he will stand…that is God’s invitation. Jesus offered that invitation with His life, on the cross:
…and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; John 6:37b (NRSV)
That applies in the church. We are the Lord’s church, and we are to have open doors to go along with open minds and hearts. Those who are standing on the other side of the fence are welcome on God’s side of the fence with His family.
That means anyone is welcome here. But that is not an invitation to a life of privilege; rather it is an invitation to a life of joy with responsibility. This is a restating of an old maxim, with privilege comes responsibility.
We affirm that principle in many ways. When we elect public officials, we privilege them to represent us responsibly. When we put a shiny new .22 rifle in the hands of a young boy about to go hunting for the first time, we expect his response will reflect a growing sense of maturity. He holds in his hands the privilege of choice in target and when he will pull the trigger; but he also holds within himself the responsibility to choose well – and the corresponding accountability to the higher authority (Mom and Dad) as to how he has discharged that responsibility!
What did you do with what you were given? That is the principle behind the question God asked Adam about his activities around the tree of life. That is what God wanted to know of Cain regarding his brother Abel. That’s what God requires of you and me….an answer…are you respecting the way I have told you to live towards me, and towards your fellow humans?
God says in these first several sentences of the commandments that we do indeed have a choice of which side of the fence we want; but there is a definite responsibility that comes along with the privilege if we choose His side of the fence. He says look at Who I am; I brought you out of the dead-end of bondage in Egypt. I am the Lord…nobody else. I take this seriously, so you’d better do the same; there will be serious consequences for those who don’t! Don’t ever put anything above Me…you don’t want to go there!
“I Am the LORD” – what a name! It was the name given to Moses at the burning bush. “They want to know who sent you…tell ‘em I Am sent you”. So that is who we serve today; we serve and worship the Great I Am!
Every part of the problem I’m going to discuss with you today comes under this solution –
God has told us how He wants us to live our lives; our job is to obey!
If that’s the solution….what’s the problem?
The problem will be the topic of our sermons for the next five weeks. We will be considering the nature of the church…who we are, what we stand for, and how we are called to serve this great I Am.
We will look not just at the privilege side (joy and heaven), but the responsibility side – what the Father of this family expects of His family members.
The problem is that a good number of folks don’t get it. There is quite a misunderstanding about what’s required of a child of God – about what’s required of a member in the local church. Specifically, the 800 pound gorilla has to do with understanding just what is expected of everyone who has chosen this family side of the fence.
Instead of just issuing a letter or writing a newsletter column, I sensed this is an opportune time to grapple with the gorilla and pull him apart. We will do this in the context of family – God’s family. He is the Lord, we are His family. The whole question is (and has always been): What kind of family are we?
Five words will dominate the next five weeks: loyal, strong, safe, true and sharing. These words are descriptive of what the Ten Commandments tell us are the nature and character of God. By definition then, those of us who are in that family have the family DNA chain; we are people of faith.
Today’s word is LOYAL…God’s family is loyal!
What does it mean to be a loyal member of God’s family?
Loyalty certainly has to do with choice – we may feel a compulsion to do all sorts of things, but loyalty is all about choosing. Human beings are created to choose God. We are created to look towards the Lord; it is part of our soul make-up! Wise theologians throughout the centuries have held that there is a God-shaped hole in each of our hearts; we are never satisfied, or sense anything like being complete until our souls are at peace with God.
To be a loyal member of God’s family is to worship – to seek out that relationship with God and fulfill His purposes in our lives. The first eleven verses of the commandments passage teach us that worship is foremost in God’s heart. He knows we find ourselves in Him, and His command to worship, to keep his name and day holy, are vital to our souls. The soul of a woman or man is what makes each of us what we are. Until our hearts bow naturally and fully in worship, we are like the animals, scraping and scrapping-out an existence. We grab at what’s around us in hopes of finding something worthwhile, and, like the preacher of Ecclesiastes we find all is vanity….empty!
“Getting it” when it comes to the gorilla of being a worshipping community means we want to worship. Nobody has to watch over our shoulder, force us to get up on Sunday and come to the house of God to sit through another boring service.
Getting it means we come for a different reason. It means we have recognized the engraved, personal invitation from the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He has expressed His love for us in Jesus Christ, and coming to His house is our joy. Sure, it is a responsibility, but we’ve figured out that somewhere in all the learning, listening, bowing, singing, giving, serving and going…the responsibility is meat to our souls and refreshment to our spirits. It is music! It is a loyalty that develops with time…but it is unmistakable!
In elementary school I played the cornet -- really, the music teacher said I never really played a musical instrument – what I really did was play on her nerves. The unholy sounds that came out of that hunk of twisted metal could never be confused with music. I began to believe music was some horrible conspiracy, given by God to confuse 11 year old boys. I only measured it by my terrible experience.
Later, I listened to Heifitz, the virtuoso, perform a violin concerto. I still don’t understand music, because I’ve never studied it seriously – but I know now there is a realm of joy that touches the soul through music that can never be reached in any other way. If I’d had any sense at 11 years old, I would have given myself to studying Heifitz – that is the way to produce music, rather than high-pitched hog squeals.
It is that way with God. The virtuosity of relationship with Him is not attainable in any way except when we let go of the other gods in our life. It is when we lose ourselves in Him that we find our true nature for which we are created. We begin to obey His will, His commandment -- and in so doing we find we love Him and His commandment. We find we are worshipping Him!
