I AM YOUR GOD
Just a few weeks ago I started the first in a series of sermons that have really begun to make me see things around me a little more clearly. I was starting here and we were discussing the problems that I have come across when people tell me that they have to get their lives straightened our in order for God to accept them. Because that’s how it works. The better I act, the better I behave the more God will love me. The more he’ll accept me. The more he’s going to hear me and listen to my prayers.
The problem with that kind of thinking is that it’s a lie.
Where did that idea come from to begin with? Well, we talked about that too.
If you were to ask someone if they’re going to heaven, nine times out of ten they’re going to tell you that they are. When you ask them how they know, somewhere in that discussion they going to bring up the fact that they obey the rules. They obey the Ten Commandments.
Now if you’ll remember that discussion we noted that the Ten Commandments are not a condition of God’s love. He doesn’t give them out and say, “OK. Here you go. All you have to do is obey these rules and I’ll accept you.” Instead he has a relationship with the people he gives his rules to. So the commandments instead become a confirmation of a relationship with him.
It works like this. I give rules to my kids, because they are my kids. You give rules to your kids because you have a relationship with them. God gives his rules to his children because they are his children. They already have a relationship with him. And I can’t come up and give rules to your kids. If I did you’d look at me and say, “They’re not your kids.”
That was just the beginning of what I discovered along the way. I’ve been going to church pretty much my whole life and I honestly couldn’t list all ten of the Ten Commandments, even now after studying them so in depth.
The world is the same way. If you ask most people what the Ten Commandments are, usually they will come up with thou shall not kill and thou shall not steal. Once in a while you’ll find someone who knows you shall not commit adultery. But these are all at the end of the commandments. Very rarely will you find someone who knows the first two.
So today we’re going to jump into the text of the Ten Commandments. You’ll find it over Exodus chapter 20. We’re only going to be looking at the first two today.
So beginning in verse one. “And God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”
This is huge1
Don’t have any other gods.
Not even one.
Don’t have any other gods because I am the only God
There is one fundamental truth that God wanted to express with this commandment.
There is only one God.
We talked a little bit about this last time. The Israelites had just come out of 400 years of slavery in the land of Egypt. At the time, Egypt gods the Egyptians worshipped. They had gods for everything. There were gods for agriculture, for fertility, for the Nile River, and for war. They had personal and family gods that only the individual served and the rest of the nation did not.
To give you an idea of just how many gods the Egyptians served we kind of need to look at Biblical archeology. There is a theory that during the time of Joseph the pharaoh over all of Egypt was a man by the name of Amonhotep III. The reason this theory exists is that during his reign as king he abolished the worship of all the Egyptian gods and said we will worship only one god. The true God. If you look into scripture this is something that did occur during Joseph’s lifetime. Needless to say this law did not make him a very popular king. In fact, it got him assassinated.
The next king, if current archeology is correct, would be Tutankhamon. Now this king we know quite a bit about. His tomb was one of the only ones that has ever been found intact. At the back of his tomb there was a small wooden cabinet. The cabinet contained 32 drawers. Inside of each drawer was a statue between two and three inches tall. These statues were the representation of various deities the Egyptians worshipped during his reign. Thirty-two that’s a huge number.
When the Jesus is doing his work about 1400 years later, the Romans are the major world power. They were still worshipping multiple gods. It won’t be for about another 700 years after the death of Christ that another nation, another religion says there is only one god.
So for the Israelites to worship only one god, the God, was a huge deal. No one else was doing it. No one had done it before them. And it would be long time after them before anyone else does.
And here is God saying, “I’m it. You can only worship me because I am the only God there is.”
So here it is. The main reason that people have looked to multiple gods is to find the answers to all of life’s questions.
God says, “Enough.”
You’re having crop issues? Then come to me. You’re having money problems? Then come to me. Marriage on the rocks? Come to me. You have a grandchild born? Bring me the praise. Just get a promotion at work? Bring me the glory.
You see he’s God. He not only deserves that kind of respect. He wants it from us.
And he tells us this because he knows that it’s in you and it’s in me to look in every direction other than his when these things and more occur in our live.
Just a couple of weeks ago one of my coworkers came up to me at work. He was all excited. He had just gotten engaged and they have a wedding planned for this September. Now he’s my age and so I asked him why he waited until now to get married.
He told me it wasn’t like he hadn’t been this close before. But every single time he had gotten engaged the girl had issued him an ultimatum. It was either hunting or them. You see, this coworker doesn’t just hunt. He hunts all the time. He goes out for pheasant, quail, grouse, turkey, and deer, for every available hunting session, bow, musket, rifle. He told me he makes trips for elk every couple of years to Colorado. Last year he even got one of the big game sheep. And when he isn’t hunting he’s out at a shooting range practicing his shooting so he won’t miss the target when he goes hunting.
He may not ever realize it but he just got done telling me what the god of his life is. Being married is important to him. But hunting is more important.
The sad thing is that we all have moments like that. We all have thing that we put first before God. It’s easy to do. The moment that our lives become too busy or cluttered with useless things the first thing that we throw away is our personal relationship with God. And those little things that shouldn’t have been so important take a lead role in our lives.
God wants control of all those things.
The second commandment is very similar to the first one. So let’s go on ahead and read that one. Beginning in verse 4, “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.”
Now there are a lot of people, including some Christians, that believe that this commandment is just a continuation of the first oen. And if you were to look at it quickly it certainly might seem to be. But this one is different.
For those of you who are familiar with your Bible and are familiar with this story, what’s is going on the very moment that God is giving Moses this commandment?
That’s right!
The nation of Israel is down in the valley making an idol. They’re making a golden calf. The people have gone to Aaron and said, “We don’t know anything about this God. Moses is gone and we don’t even know if he’s coming back. We need something to worship. We need some we can bow down to. We need an idol.”
You know what?
God knew that and he still gave this command. Because he knew that it was in them to need something to worship. Just like he knew that it’s in you and it’s in me.
And God right here is saying, “Don’t do it. Don’t make me into any kind of image that you create. Don’t make me a represent of something. Because I am unrepresentable.”
And the moment that you and I begin to do that, the moment that we begin to represent God somehow we break this very rule. We try to make God manageable. Because we’re telling God, “God, you’re a building. You’re a church. You’re a Sunday. You’re a worship service. God, you might even be a specific time each day. But you have to be available when I want you to be available.”
And God just shakes his head and says, “I’m not manageable. You cannot put me in a box.”
Because you can’t.
You can’t put God in a box.
No matter how hard you try. It is not possible for you to put him in a place where you can determine when he will come. He’s always there and he is definitely bigger than any box you or I could imagine.
Over and over again as I was working on this sermon, this image kept pooping into my head. When I was a little kid I had this small, blue-painted, wooden box. It had this thin wire handle on the side. When I turned the handle a tune would play and as the tune ended out would pop this plastic headed clown. Then I’d stuff him right back in there.
The truth is that so many people are like me and they’ve already made an idol of God. You may have done it and may not even realize it. It doesn’t have to be something physical. But you may have created your own God-in-the-box. I know I have.
Whenever I feel like I need to, I can go get my box and crank the handle. This little tune plays out.
Whenever I need him,
Whenever I’m in trouble,
Whenever I have sin,
I turn this little handle.
And out pops God.
And the truth is God knew this was coming. He knew how easy it would be for us to let him only have a small portion of our lives. He knew that we would try to make him manageable and put him in a box.
This was so important that he added a warning to these two commandments. In the second part of verse 5 it says, “For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
Now I honestly don’t know if that warning still applies to us. I don’t know if it only applies to the Israelites. I don’t even know about punishments to the third and fourth generations. I don’t know what kind punishments there might be.
I do know this. Some of us are still carrying emotional scars for the things our parents did. Some people here may still be holding on to hurts for things that our grandparents did. They may have been caused by bad decisions. Maybe they made some bad financial choices. Maybe they made choices that they regret. I know there are things every parent regrets and they can never be taken back. And in your heart you know that it’s not fair.
This is the kind of punishment that I somehow imagine God could be referring to. And no, it’s not fair.
But God never says anything about being fair. Only jealous.
I know too that there are some of you who don’t like that idea either. Personally, I hate jealousy. It drives me nuts. In fact, I want so deeply to believe just the opposite of God. He is a God of love, mercy, and grace after all.
The truth of the matter is that God wants to be first and foremost in your life. He deserves to be the most important.
But then he includes a promise. “Showing love to a thousand generations.” That’s you and that’s me. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son.” That promise is for you. It’s for me. Because he loves you and he loves me. A “thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” A promise fulfilled for you and me.
I was listening to a minister this past week while at work on my headset. He said something that truly impressed me and so I had to write it down. You’ll find it there at the bottom of your sermon notes. He said, “Christianity is a series of steps. Each time you have taken one step, you must ask, “God what is the next step you want me to take?”
It’s my belief that beyond accepting Christ as your savior there is no step more important than making God in charge of it all. Making sure that he is your only God. You’ve got to get rid of all those little gods that surround your life. And then you’ve got to make sure you’re not trying to put God in a manageable box.
