No Other gods Before Me: An Exposition of Exodus 20:1-6
We begin this morning a series on the Ten Commandments with a study of the first two commandments. There are actually more than ten commandments if one breaks apart the second commandment and separate the prohibition making of graven images from not bowing down to worship them. Also, one can separate the commandment not to covet into several separate commandments. There is general agreement, however, that it is best to distill the 14 prohibitions down to ten, although they might be grouped differently. However, we should realize that the ten commandments are not independent prohibitions. If one covets something that is not his, then they are assigning worth to this object or person. As “worship” consists has at its roots “worth ship,” then to covet is to bow down to another god and putting it before God. This is to steal God of His glory. Paul rightly tells us that if one breaks one of the particular commandments, then he has broken all of them.
The Ten Commandments have been commented upon for millennia by, Jews, Christians, and even non-Christians. They are one of the pillars of Western Civilization. Many unbelievers even attach a sense of divine authority to them. If these commandments were practiced by humanity, then this world would be a better place. Add Jesus who provides the motivation of love and we would have a utopia. It brings up the question, “Why then is the world in such wretched condition?” There is something in us that causes us to rebel against God. We want to find our own way. We want autonomy, something which belongs only to God. The problem has existed from the Fall. The people of Israel, to whom these commandments were first addressed were no exception. The commandments do proclaim the will of God for us. So, it is good for us to study them.
When we see lists of the Ten Commandments in the courthouses and the front lawn signs, there is something missing. We state the prohibitions without providing the rationale. God explains why father and mother should be honored. God explains why we should not bow down and worship other gods. The most grievous error is to start the Ten Commandments in verse 3 which lists the first prohibition rather than the first verse which provides the rationale and the necessary context for understanding them.
The Ten Commandments begin with the words: “I am the Lord thy God which hath brought thee out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” This, first of all reveals that they were first uttered to the Children of Israel, a people whom the LORD had chosen for a special relationship. Although God’s will is just as applicable to any nation, we must not miss that this is given in the context of a covenant between God and His people. The verse reminds these special people that they had been in bondage in Egypt. Egypt had many laws of there own and worshiped many gods. These laws caused the Israelites to suffer cruel bondage. The Egyptians has a death cult, and the name itself in Hebrew means the “place of graves.” This sets up a sharp contrast between the laws and gods of Egypt and Yahweh. If the culture of Egypt led to death and graves, then what we see here in the Ten Commandments is meant to lead one to life and freedom. This is the attitude we need to come to the Ten Commandments for.
The next thing the preamble tells us is that the basis of the Ten Commandments is not law at all, but grace. It is by God’s grace that Israel was freed from Egyptian slavery and brought to Sinai. When we realize God’s purpose for the Commandments is to maintain freedom rather than to introduce us to a new slavery. Satan has always been good at twisting God’s motivation. He made Eve question God’s motives for the prohibition of eating from the tree of the “Knowledge of Good and Evil.” He presented the LORD as being a cosmic killjoy who was trying to keep them down. He also misrepresented himself as being the means to true freedom. Adam and Eve believed the lie, and the world has suffered slavery to sin and death as a result.
The first commandment says: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” From what we have learned from the preamble to the Ten Commandments already, we can see that the worship of other gods will invariably lead to slavery and death. The father the world strays from even the pretense of keeping the Ten Commandments, the deeper into slavery the human race descends. We must remember that God is over all, and His standards are applicable to all creation. When God’s sovereignty is challenged, this leads to a power vacuum. Some other god must be created by men as an authority. The Enlightenment promised freedom and autonomy. The free will of man is proclaimed. They said that we are now free from God and able to determine right and wrong for ourselves. The problem is that every human has a will. Everyone wants to be his own god. But we see a world of increasingly totalitarian world that some people’s free will has more power than others. In order for the elite to have free will, they must impose their “free will” upon others. This reduces the most of mankind to slavery. This can either be expressed openly by use of power and fear. Or it can be done by deception. They deceive the people with the promise of free will. And the people become ignorant that they are being manipulated. The truth is that even the rich do not have free will either as they will one day have to give account to the Sovereign God who alone possesses free will.
The paradox of free will is that one only possesses free will when they do the will of God who alone is the possessor of free will. When we acknowledge this truth, we are set free from ourselves and from external tyranny. Those who exercise what they think is their “free will” upon people have evil intentions. They do not care whether you live or die. One lives if they are “useful” and neglected or killed if they are not. There is no way that one is free under these circumstances. But it is God’s will that none perish. It is the will of the supremely good and gracious God that we be free men and women. But when we put these other gods before God, we resign ourselves to slavery.
The Bible states that God created us in His image and not the other way around. Nothing can be more futile than to bow down to gods of our own making. It is axiomatic that the creator is greater than his creation. This is why we are to worship God rather than the creation. But it is equally true for us in the sense that we are greater than the stuff we create. When we bow down to our own works, we are not only diminishing the glory of God. We are also diminishing ourselves as well. God made us overlords of the planet to care for it. But we lose our authority when we bow down to the gods we make, whether they are made of gold or neon. Deliverance must come from above rather than ourselves.
Nowhere is a more evil god served than the god of human science. Modern science declares that all things can be explained apart from God; therefore, even if there was a god somewhere, He would not be necessary. There would be no need to worship Him. So, we have replaced the ministers and priests of Jesus Christ with the new scientific priesthood. We have made god out of our scientists. But once “science” is divorced from God, a new authority has to be created in its place in order to explain everything. The problem is that humans will ultimately corrupt the neon gods they make as well as themselves. Science has reduced the uniqueness of man to just being another one of the animals. We are taught that we are insignificant specs of dust in an ever-expanding universe. Science for a season remained tied to the Christian faith, if only be tradition. The basis of scientific truth was based upon the idea that God created all things for a purpose and that the laws of physics and nature framed scientific truth. The facts of science had to be proven. But now, science is no longer being tested but proclaimed as “fact” by the experts. Anyone who denies their authority are “science deniers.” Scientists have become arrogant and do not feel they need to defend their proclamations. Anyone who challenges them will be censored and castigated. This scientific elite claims some sort or “socialism” which is not socialism at all but a deception. One cannot have “socialism” when society is being run by sociopaths. When redistribution of wealth is discussed, it is not as they say to take from the rich and give to the poor. The result is that the people are fleeced of their wealth and dignity and the rich become richer and more powerful. When we worship the gods of science, we inevitably become slaves.
One of the most pernicious deceptions of the gods of science is in our technology. When social media first came out, it was lauded as the pure expression of democracy. Anyone could voice their opinions. Anyone could be an author. The promise of a new dawn for humanity have come. Everyone could be connected to the world by computers and cellphones. One could talk with people from all over the world. But something happened. First of all, social media has contributed to the rise of suicides. For all the connection promised, people became more lonely and desperate. The creators of our technology had been worshiped as gods. They became rich and powerful. Soon they saw themselves as gods who had to control the narrative and censor everything they disagree with. Technology has become increasingly totalitarian. People have become enslaved. What is even worse, they pay big money to forge their own chains. They buy the latest and greatest cellphones. This technology means that everything we say and everywhere we go is being tracked. It is sobering enough for us to realize that God knows everything we say, do or think. But at least we know that God is gracious and sent His son to free us from our chains if we only believe in Him. It is quite another to bow to the gods of technology who have nefarious motives, who wish to control and enslave us.
We have also made gods out of athletes and Hollywood also. What kind of gods have we created. They virtue signal and pontificate to us about morals while they themselves are enslaved to the very worst of perversions. Not only do they wish to enslave us; they are slaved to destruction themselves. This is why it is so wrong to put people on pedestals. We pervert them as well as ourselves. We must not bow down to any god but only to Yahweh who is above all human sin and perversion. The only way we can be equal is before God who is equally over all. This is why if the Ten Commandments alone with the entire Word of God is the only way to freedom and life.
It should be plain enough that we should not worship our leaders either. They are supposed to look after their welfare rather than using us for their welfare. The farther one drifts from even the appearance and lip service to Christendom, the more perverted our leaders become.
So, regardless of the many gods we make and serve, they all lead to destruction of these gods as well as their worshipers.
I do not wish to leave this sermon on such a depressing note. It is true that the human condition is in itself hopeless. Even the Ten Commandments cannot alter this. But there is a way out. We cannot alter ourselves, but God is able to alter us. There is an altar to which we can come. As long as this world endures and we live in it, we cannot help but to be in external servitude. Even if we throw away all our technology, we cannot escape. There are cameras everywhere. Even if we do not use electronic banking, our banks are online, and our accounts are accessible to those with evil intentions. It is also true we are enslaved to our own passions which are exploited by those who feel they are in authority. But the news for the Christian is not that God has taken us out of Egypt to desolate Sinai. The children of Israel we taken out of Egypt, but Egypt was not taken out from them. Jesus instead prays not that we should be taken out of the world at this time, but rather that we be kept from evil. We are to live in this modern Egypt as witnesses to Jesus with the promise that He would be with us alway, even to the end of the age. There were many in the early church who were slaves in this world. But Paul reminds us that even though they were externally slaves, they were free in Christ. He also reminds those who were “free” in this world that they were the Lord’s slaves.
Even though we be in increasingly hard bondage in this world as it turns away from Christ, our slavery in this world can be used to be a witness to the way of true freedom. This is a freedom of the heart and not of external circumstance. We can use the slavery of our technology to proclaim Jesus. But we are not to be slaves to sin. Even though we use the chains, we proclaim the true freedom in Christ. We must not be ignorant that Satan would twist the truth against us. This is why we must persist in the study of God’s Word as well as prayer. Satan uses religion to deceive, so we must clearly understand what the will of God is. It is His will that all be free from sin. This does not mean that all will believe and come to the knowledge of the truth, the only truth that can set us free. We do know that those who believe in Jesus who died for our sins and rose again on the third day have been effectively set free from the law of sin and death.
We also realize in our hard bondage that a new Exodus awaits us. We pray in the Lord’s prayer: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” When we pray this we are not saying that this reality is dependent upon our prayers and actions. This is soley the work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Instead, when we pray these things, we are reminded of who God is and what He has promised us. This gives us hope even as we groan in increasingly difficult bondage. The day of Jesus’ return is near, and our temporal bondage is coming to an end. We shall enjoy the incorruptible future and celebrate the ultimate freedom meant for God’s people where we shall be externally free even as we are internally free by the work of the Holy Spirit in us today. We shall be free precisely because Jesus our King shall rule over us. In the meanwhile, let us remind each other of this and encourage each other in the trials of this life.
