God’s Top 10:
Exodus 20:3
August 2002
Joe Bedy Central Christian Church
There is a great deal of competition to be NUMERAL UNO in our culture.
Just in our advertising alone the lists is endless. For example:
Avis/Hertz, Coke/Pepsi, Ford/Chevrolet, UF/FSU
The competition in our own lives for #1 is equally as heavy. The lists can include the accumulation and love of money, career success, husbands, wives, families, sports, cars, recreation, golf, fishing, hunting, shopping, even church and church activities compete to be number one in our lives and when they do all sorts of ungodly things happen. May I mention Enron or Worldcom, maybe Martha Stewart or the promoter for Shaq who sold tickets to an event after being informed of Shaq’s uncertainty of being able to attend.
Exo 20:3 you shall have no other gods before me.
God is serious about this command and that is why He made it the first and foremost command. He wrote it in stone that we might love God with all our hearts, all our minds, all our strength and all of our very souls and then to love our neighbors as ourselves.
As we look in the weeks ahead at these ten commandments and how they are hooked into our lives as NT Christians, we will see that the first four commandments deal with our relationship to God, the last six deal with our relationship to each other.
It is so very easy for us to put other things or people first in our lives and when we do God is reduced to second place, third place and often totally removed from our lives.
When that happens we are a fraction of what we could be, we become less of a person that God intended for us to be and collectively we are a nation far away from God.
There are some serious questions we need to ask ourselves:
You must ask yourself several questions, in order to determine if you have other gods in your life beside the true God. One important question is: On what do you set your affections? In other words, when your mind takes a break from the complexities of daily living, where does it come to rest? Like a compass needle, which though spun around, will always come to rest pointing north, where does your mind point when it comes to rest? What is really important to you? What do you think about and long for? Is it your job? A promotion? Perhaps your home? Your car? Maybe another person? Or money? Material things? On what do you set your affections? Do you set your affections on God? We are told in the New Testament, to set our affections on things above.
Another important question is, whom are you trying to impress? We work, we buy, we plan, we push ourselves, we study, and we achieve, but why? Whom are we trying to impress? Some may say that they do it all for themselves and that may be true. We may be trying to impress ourselves. In other words, there is a purely self-centered motive for our ambitions. We work for ourselves. We accumulate for ourselves. We achieve for ourselves. Some may say they don’t do it merely for themselves but also for others, for their family, or for some other person or persons. In other words, it’s not just their opinion that counts, but other people’s opinions are important to them. They are trying to impress other people. Perhaps they are people-pleasers. Perhaps they are striving hard so they will look good in the eyes of others.
The First Commandment, however, exhorts us to be God-pleasers. The person we should seek to impress is God. We should seek to be a delight to Him.
An additional question is: What are we living for? In other words, what are our goals? What are our aspirations? What are our objectives? Does it all center around us? If you were to list your goals on a sheet of paper, would the spiritual goals be at the top? Would there be goals that relate to your walk with God, and your service to Him? Or would your goals simply be centered around personal achievement, job, home, family, money and the like? What are you living for? These are important questions, which will help us evaluate what we put first in our lives.
You understand that these other things are not bad things, I think we can agree they are honorable and worthy, but when we give them a higher priority than we give God-we become violators of God’s law.
When we lose sight of the first commandment, we lose sight of God. Is it any wonder that without God first in the lives of corporate America, corporate America would do anything less than look out for number one? Does it shock you that people who make their own gains first and foremost in their lives-would take the money and run?
We need to understand that we cannot worship two gods, we will love one and hate the other. Also, the truth is we will become like the god we worship. If money is our god, greed is our god then we will become exceedingly like our god. If it is lust then flesh and the devil are our god and each day we will look more worldly and more like the Devil.
What’s your name? Who is your daddy? Is he rich like me?
If we serve a lesser god, we serve self and the Devil.
Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?
The one true God is just and loving and if He is our God, then we will be just and loving too! If God is our God then His nature will deeply affect our nature and what we do, regardless of how severe or how minor our character flaws are. His nature will become our nature.
Preachers should not spend as much time telling us what to do as they should telling us who’s we are. If we know to whom we belong then we will know what to do!
Justice is blind they say in America, the evil get rewarded the righteous suffer, that may be true, but God is not blind and He knows who our gods are!
I want you to know also, that making God first in our lives is not an automatic response to His love, grace and kindness. It is a matter of choice.
I hope your critical minds are asking: what then shall we do?
This part of the sermon is tough and I want you to know I have gone through this process of self-evaluation.
The first is, to examine your life. Really look at your life. I’m not talking about a surface examination here. All too often we are guilty of only seeing what we want to see. Thoroughly examine yourself. Ask your husband or wife to evaluate you. Now that may be dangerous. They know us better than you think they do, so put on your tough skin and determine that you are not going to be upset. But ask them. Ask them honestly to evaluate both your strengths and your weaknesses. Ask them what they perceive that you really put first in your life, and then listen. Ask your children. As a matter of fact, they may be more brutally honest than even your spouse. You see, our children not only see what we say, they see what we do. But if you are serious about examining your life, they can give valuable information. Also ask others. Go to people who know you and love you, and ask them if there are some blind spots in your eye. You may be surprised at what they say.
If we are going to do a thorough analysis of our own lives, we need accurate information and to obtain it we have to do an honest evaluation. We have to look at our lives closely, in some detail. It is the only way to know if we are serving God or serving self.
Each of us has a dark-side that causes us to pursue unholy gods, sometimes even veiled in the name of religion. In each of us can be a compulsive, narcissistic, paranoid, passive aggressive or codependent nature. If we do not understand and by His grace overcome our dark-side it can lead us away from God.
For example, I see in Moses a compulsive leader, whose desire to maintain absolute organization was burning him out and the people. This workaholic attitude and behavior can hide an angry heart. A heart that had expectations placed on it that they could never meet and this leads them into a perfectionism, which becomes their god and separates them from the one true God.
Or the narcissistic leader who has a powerful drive in his dark side to make a name for himself and do something really grand. Maybe even a mega church leader. Yet, Yaweh is not his God, he is his god and we try to cover up what we do as godly, when it is self.
When we do this God is not #1, the name we make for ourselves and what other people think is.
Co-dependency can cause us to develop a serious need to please other people. Bill Clinton has a codependency and that led him into blatant lying, drug use and extra-marital affairs.
My point is that we are flawed and there exist in each of us disorders to some extent that can cause us to make other gods our god and without self examination we will not even recognize it.
Take for example some of our TV evangelists who have let money, wealth and power become the controlling influences in their lives instead of God. When we do this we have other gods before God.
When we hear this request of God we have two options we can change and inherit the kingdom of God or we can go away like the rich young ruler. You know the story Jesus told the rich young ruler, “"There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."
“When he heard this, he became very sorrowful, for he was very rich” (Luke 18:23).
Oswald Chambers writes:
The rich young ruler went away from Jesus speechless with sorrow, having nothing to say in response to Jesus’ words. He had no doubt about what Jesus had said or what it meant, and it produced in him a sorrow with no words with which to respond. Have you ever been there? Has God’s Word ever come to you, pointing out an area of your life, requiring you to yield it to Him? Maybe He has pointed out certain personal qualities, desires, and interests, or possibly relationships of your heart and mind. If so, then you have often been speechless with sorrow. The Lord will not go after you, and He will not plead with you. But every time He meets you at the place where He has pointed, He will simply repeat His words, saying, “If you really mean what you say, these are the conditions.”
“Sell all that you have …” (18:22). In other words, rid yourself before God of everything that might be considered a possession until you are a mere conscious human being standing before Him, and then give God that. That is where the battle is truly fought—in the realm of your will before God. Are you more devoted to your idea of what Jesus wants than to Jesus Himself? If so, you are likely to hear one of His harsh and unyielding statements that will produce sorrow in you. What Jesus says is difficult—it is only easy when those who have His nature in them hear it. Beware of allowing anything to soften the hard words of Jesus Christ.
I can be so rich in my own poverty, or in the awareness of the fact that I am nobody, that I will never be a disciple of Jesus. Or I can be so rich in the awareness that I am somebody that I will never be a disciple. Am I willing to be destitute and poor even in my sense of awareness of my destitution and poverty? If not, that is why I become discouraged. Discouragement is disillusioned self-love, and self-love may be love for my devotion to Jesus—not love for Jesus Himself
The implications and obligations of the 1st commandment are far reaching.
We must evaluate where we are with God as Number one and then ask Him to help us to make the changes to be all that we can be, all that He intends for us to be. It will not be done without Him and yet it won’t be done entirely by Him, we must make lifestyle changes to join Him in what He wants to do in our lives.
The commandment calls for a lifestyle that is dominated by our relationship to God, who we are in Christ.
Our relationship to the one true God dominates every aspect of our lives, what we do, what we say what we think and how we respond to others.
There can be no area of our lives in which anything comes before God, if it does we have violated commandment # 1 and we can go no further. Anything even our church work or our ministries that relegates God to second place or less, becomes in effect another god whom we serve.
In the Gospels Jesus said these kinds of things: “who is my family, but those who do the will of my father.”
Mat 6:24 "No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
Mat 6:25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
Mat 6:26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
Mat 6:27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?
Luke 14:26 "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.
Luke 14:27 Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
The point is that without God being first in our lives none of our other relationships can ever be all that God has intended them to be.
In Gen 22 Abraham could have easily loved his son Isaac more than he loved God and refused to sacrifice him.
What is stopping you from making God first in your life and receiving every blessing and every promise He has for you?
In Closing I would like to share these final words, words written in red.
Mat 6:28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin,
Mat 6:29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.
Mat 6:30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you--you of little faith?
Mat 6:31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ’What will we eat?’ or ’What will we drink?’ or ’What will we wear?’
Mat 6:32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
Mat 6:33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
COUNT THE COST
What will we lose if we obey a God who demands such a single-hearted devotion?
Nothing that was not His best for us!
The better questions are who is this God who demands such devotion and what can I know about Him? What will we gain if we obey?
I will tell you who He is: The giver of life, the ultimate perfect Father, who provides every good and perfect gift, life, health, home, spouse and children, the church, friends and daily needs. HE is the God who allows adversity to refine us; the mystery of science to challenge us, and technology to baffle us. The God whose ways can humble the proud and exalt the humble. The one who He is, is the one we can be like if we place Him on the throne where He belongs. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the creator and owner of all things great and small, He is the LORD our all in all.
Bibliography
Hoke, David “Semon on Exodus 20:3”
Stroman, John A. “ Who is number one?”
The Holy Bible NIV. NASB.
McIntosh and Rima. Overcoming The Dark side of Leadership. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2001.
