April 19, 2009
The One and Only
Exodus 20:1-3
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1 And God spoke all these words: 2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 You shall have no other gods before me.”
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A while ago there was a list of the 100 best novels written over the past 100 years. It caused quite a stir because virtually nobody agreed with the number one pick, James Joyce’s, Ulysses, partly because it is supposed to be a very, very difficult book to read, and some have described it as a miserable read. Any list you look at will have different number one books. About all anyone would agree on is that we love lists. In fact, Time Magazine complies the 50 Best Top 10 Lists each year.
It’s been said that the most popular list is the Ten Commandments. Not a bad choice, but not everyone would agree with that. Ted Turner said the Ten Commandments were obsolete, he said:
We’re living with outmoded rules. The rules we’re living under are the Ten Commandments, and I bet nobody here even pays much attention to them, because they are too old. Today, the Ten Commandments wouldn’t go over. Nobody around likes to be commanded. Commandments are out.
Turner then offered his own version which he called the Ten Voluntary Initiatives. Listen to his first two – #1, “I promise to love and respect planet Earth and all living things on the earth, especially my fellow species.” Not bad. #2, “I promise to treat all persons everywhere with dignity, respect and friendliness,” and then he went on to bash Christians calling us losers and bozos. He later apologized. An interesting view from one who, considered a career as a missionary.
Well, for the next ten weeks we’re going to take a look at the 10 commandments. You won’t be tested on which one is number 1, 5 or 8, but hopefully you will come to understand why God wanted these commandments to be known. But more than just knowing them, I believe these old, archaic commandments are very relevant for our lives today and if we would learn what God really wants from us, we would be so much better off, spiritually, emotionally and mentally. God did not give us these commandments because He wanted to prohibit us from having fun, instead He gave them to us because He loves us, and desires only what is good for us.
The Ten Commandments are divisible into two sections. The first four deal with our relationship to God. They are about a vertical relationship, and direct our eyes toward heaven. The last six concern our relationship to one another. The 10 commandments focus on the relationships we have in life, with God and one another.
One of the negative comments about the ten commandments is that they were written negatively. We are told don’t do this and don’t do that. But the reason I believe God wrote them that way, is because we tend to take things into our own hands. Our inclination is to respond to the minimum, to let ourselves off the hook if at all possible. By telling us what He wants, God is seeking for you and I to obey Him. God simply wants us to willingly follow Him.
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So, let’s look at this first commandment from God . . . You shall have no other gods before me. What does this mean for us? And how does it apply to us some 3500 years after Moses received it on Mount Sinai
The first commandment lays the foundation for every other commandment and in fact for all of life. If we can’t follow this first commandment, if it will not command our attention, then none of the other 9 will take in our lives as well.
When the Jewish people were living in Egypt as slaves, the Egyptians had many gods whom they prayed to. They had gods for every season of the year, they had gods to help them have babies, they had gods of death, they had a god of cats, a god of weather and many, many more. In fact at last count, there were 114 Egyptian gods and goddesses.
The only culture the Israelites knew was the Egyptian culture. They saw the temples and the worship practices. This is all they knew. And we tend to repeat what we know and think is normal. The religious faith and practices of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the older leaders of the Jews were gone; and the people were dabbling in Egyptian religion.
So, God had to help them understand that there is only one God, and that was the God who delivered them from Egypt. There were no other gods in the world. In any list, especially biblical lists, the first item of the list makes it the most important. So, this first commandment is the most important and is the cornerstone which every other commandment will be built upon.
As a result of what God told Moses, we must make God the only God in our life, to offer Him all of our love.
All too often Israel worshiped the wrong gods with all their being. That is how they should have been worshiping God. Remember while Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the commandments from God, the people were busy making a golden calf and worshiping it. In the same way, we have our golden calves, our idols that get in the way of true worship and devotion of God.
You see, God does not settle for less than first place in our lives. We must choose which god we will serve, because the true God will have no rivals to the throne of our hearts. God will not play second fiddle.
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This verse can also be literally translated, “You shall have no other gods before my face.” The Hebrew word for ‘me’ comes from the word for ‘face.’ In other words, don’t come before God’s face while you are worshiping other gods. That is an insult to Him. Jesus said we cannot serve God and money at the same time. But it extends beyond that, we cannot serve God and anything else at the same time. Something will always rise to the top of our list of what we will worship.
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God and God alone is to receive the first priority in our lives. Most Americans don’t have images like the Egyptians had, we don’t have pictures of different animals or statues we worship. Instead, we find other objects to fill us as points of worship.
It is God, and God alone, that we must worship and serve.
Maybe you’re thinking, “what does this have to do with me, since I don’t worship idols?” Maybe the world is right that the 10 commandments are old and irrelevant.
But, let me tell you something, anytime you love something more than Jesus Christ, you are committing idol worship. Anytime there are things in your life which are more important to you than your personal relationship with God, you’re committing idolatry.
“Whatever you love most, serve most, seek out most, give to the most, worship the most, and care about the most, that is your god” (James White, article What is your God?)
Your god can be your career, your bank account, your looks, your self-image, a position of influence and power. It can be drinking, drugs, porn, or any addiction, material goods - clothes, tools, technology, leisure time, television, video games, ultimately leading to the point where our greatest god becomes ourselves, as we engage in self worship.
It can even be something that’s considered good, yet you allow it to dominate your life more than God. Even church can become a god in place of God. Your god is whatever you allow to control your life. It is the place you pay homage to.
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We’ve all broken the first commandment, and this is why Jesus’ first of the two great commandments in Mark 12:30 is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”
You see, the focus of our devotion must be directed towards God. We must love God with everything we have . . . with all of our heart, with all of our spirit, with all of our mind and with all of our strength. Have you ever tried that? Have you ever tried to love someone or something with every fiber of your being? It takes so much energy doesn’t it? But what happens when we attempt this type of love to other people?
It usually doesn’t work out the way we want it to. So many times we try to love someone like that and we find we are hoping to win their love and trying to coerce them to love us. We try to call them more often, or we give them more gifts, or we bare our heart to them, and we hope they will respond in kind. Usually, it’s because we want them to want us and love us, because we are craving love.
What this first commandment and Jesus are calling us to do is direct all of our needs to God. When we call upon God as ours. When we give Him our devotion, our heart, spirit, mind and body, and we do it by making our love of God our first source of love, then we will begin to experience the love of God in ways we didn’t realize were available to us.
But we must make God first in our lives. I have said this before when I spoke here the first time. Slide It comes from the verse in Luke 14:26, when Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.”
Now this sounds pretty crude, even bordering on cruel, but the point Jesus is making is that of course, we must love our parents, our spouse, our kids, our siblings and even ourselves . . . but we must love them less than we love Jesus. He must become the number one priority relationship in our lives. Think of it this way if God is the number one priority in your life and all of your relationships flow out of that one relationships, then wouldn’t it make sense that every other relationship we have would be healthier.
We wouldn’t bow down to other people and be people pleasers because we need to fill an emotional vacuum; we wouldn’t give in to some of the temptations we give in to because we would be filled in our lives. We wouldn’t say yes to things we should say no to.
In fact, I was reading the autobiography of Marie Osmond and she tells a really interesting story about a role she was offered and turned down after reading the script.
Slide (good girl picture of Sandy)
You see, Marie Osmond was offered the leading role of Sandy Olsson from the movie, Grease. It was not initially offered to Olivia Newton-John. But after reading the script, Osmond said, there was this nice and innocent girl at the start of the school year. Doesn’t that picture look like a nice, innocent girl?
Click (changed picture of Sandy at end of movie)
But you see, during the school year, Sandy is tempted to be someone she is not, just so she can have this good looking guy. By the end of the movie, Sandy has changed her look and her style and now she looks like this picture.
Do you see the transformation which took place. The nice girl look, has now changed to someone who in my day would be called a ‘greaser.’ She wanted to fit in and did with a new group of friends.
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You see, Marie Osmond did not want people, young girls especially to see her in a role in which she went from one image to a totally different image, one she didn’t agree with.
This is what God is getting at in this first of the Ten Commandments, we must look to Him for what is right in life. We can’t put anything before that relationship with God. If we do we will find we are living a life of less than, instead of a life of more than.
In the end, our focus of worship, our focus of life, must be on God. We must pray and seek His wisdom and guidance, we must know His word, so that it could instruct us in the way to live, so that He is our first source of worship and is our only god. We must surround ourselves with friends who will support us and love us and encourage us as brothers and sisters in Christ. This does not mean we don’t interact and have friends who are not in the church. But when we are struggling with life issues and decisions, we need Christ-like answers and love.
After Joshua led the Israelites into Israel to take possession of the land, they made a final covenant before he died, listen to his words,
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14 "Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.
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15 But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River,
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or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."
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What is your decision, who will you serve?
Who will be your god?
