The First Commandment

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Exodus 20:1-3

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Well, this morning we begin now the Ten Commandments that we've been preparing for for quite some time.
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We began Exodus, of course, with this endeavor to make it through chapter 20 before we took a break and went to the
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Sermon on the Mount. So as we complete chapter 20 in about two and a half months, we'll head over to Matthew 5 through 7, work through the
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Sermon on the Mount. We have even more focus and more depth on understanding the role of the law in our lives as Christians.
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And then we'll come back to finish the book of Exodus, Lord willing. And so we've arrived really at the beginning of what we've been seeking now for well over a year.
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We're going to look at verses 1 through 3 this morning as we look at the First Commandment. The First Commandment will break down really into three points or three emphases.
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And every week I'm going to use our Baptist Catechism as sort of the skeletal structure of how we break down what the commandment requires and what the commandment forbids.
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And some of the commandments have some additional information with them. And that's partly to familiarize ourselves with the
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Baptist Catechism. Of course, it's a wonderful tool and resource to help us work through portions of Scripture like this.
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And especially for younger minds, younger children, it's good for them to understand what the Catechism has to say as an excellent summary of biblical teaching.
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And so let's begin by reading in Exodus 20, verses 1 through 3. And God spoke all these words, saying,
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I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
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You shall have no other gods before me. Well, this
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First Commandment gives us really three things to consider this morning.
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First, this First Commandment teaches us that we must know God in order to glorify
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Him. We must know God in order to glorify Him. Secondly, we must not glorify any other.
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We must not glorify any other. And then third, unless we glorify God alone, we will perish.
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Unless we glorify God alone, we will perish. This is how we'll look at the First Commandment.
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So first, we must know God in order to glorify Him. What's required in the
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First Commandment? This is our Catechism number 52. The First Commandment requires us to know and to acknowledge
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God, to be the only true God and our God, and to worship and glorify Him accordingly.
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And so we're really emphasizing that very first part. The First Commandment requires us to know
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God, to acknowledge Him as the only true and living God, for Him to be our
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God, to worship Him as our God, the only God, and to have no other gods before Him.
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Now, of course, the whole law of God is going to reverberate throughout the scriptures.
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The law is a summation of not only God's perfect character, but all that God requires of His creatures.
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The moral law is summed up by these ten commandments, these ten words. And though it's extended throughout the
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Word of God, it can all be reduced down to these ten words. John Colquhoun, you'll hear him a lot over the weeks to come.
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Joel Beakey recently reprinted his work on Grace and Law, a tremendous, tremendous book.
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But John Colquhoun, and he says, So extensive are the commandments in the Word of God, that everything which
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God requires may be reduced to one or another of these commandments. So throughout all of scripture, we can take all of God's requirements, and we can boil it all down to these ten words.
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These ten words, though they are elaborated and extended in many ways throughout scripture, ultimately these ten words are the sine qua non, that which out which there can be none.
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This is the core, the center, the vital nerve of what God requires of His people. Now we're looking at the first commandment, and as Thomas Watson said, this sets the whole thing in motion.
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Really the first table of the law, the first four commandments, begin with this foundational commandment.
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You shall have no other gods before me. What does that look like? What does that first commandment express itself like?
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Well, the second and the third and the fourth commandment. All of this is held together. The second commandment in terms of how we see
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God, more importantly, how we do not see God or imagine God to be like.
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He's unlike anything that He has made. How we speak of God or how we hear about God, the third commandment.
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Our time and our relation of worship to God. All of these ways are embedded within even this first commandment.
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You shall have no other gods before me. You shall glorify me and know me in this way.
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This is the first table of the law. When Jesus is rebuffing the scribes that come to Him, you can imagine these little think tanks, the scribes and the
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Pharisees, they would all get together and they would consult the Torah and they would try to come up with some burning question that would stump the
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Lord Jesus. And I can only imagine the weekends, you know, they order dominoes, the tables spread out and they're there eating pizza, coffee's brewing, they're like, come on, there has to be something that will stump
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Jesus. And every now and then, one of the brighter bulbs in the bunch says, I've got it.
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The Sadducees say, we have an idea, let's nail Him on the resurrection. So they go to Jesus and they want to entrap
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Him with this question about the resurrection. And Jesus confounds them.
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Or again, they want to know, is the writing of Moses authoritative? Because we reject anything that Moses didn't write, so why then can we believe in the resurrection?
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And in Mark 12, Jesus goes to the writings of Moses to show them, indeed, He is the God of the living.
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And so all those nights, all those hours of entrapping questions are cut in half instantly and they all go away sunken.
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Order pizza again, we're going to start all over, we're going to stump Jesus, show Him to be ignorant. But one of the scribes, who sees
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Jesus so easily dismantle everything that comes before Him with the Word of God, is so struck by this that he actually has a genuine question for Jesus.
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You can picture the whole crowd has kind of moved along, they've already rejected the Lord Jesus, but there's one scribe who says,
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I've really never heard someone teach like this. This is a man full of the spirit of wisdom, and so he almost can't help himself.
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He risks being shunned by his friends. He really has a question he wants to know the answer to,
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Mark 12, 28. One of the scribes came and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that he had answered them well, he asked him, what's the first commandment of all?
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What's the greatest commandment? Mark says that he perceived he had answered well, so this is an honest question.
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I want you to know that most people in the world today don't want to ask Jesus honest questions.
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They're a lot like the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the scribes, they have a lot of questions about Christianity.
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They have a lot of challenges to the faith, but they don't perceive that we are answering well. They're not asking out of sincerity, they're asking to entrap or to justify or vindicate their own sinfulness.
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They're not being honest, but this scribe has an honest question, and Jesus will give him an honest answer.
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This honest question, of course, must have been something that the scribe had wrestled with up to this point, this thing that he had carried around him perhaps as a burden.
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What good is it to tithe dill and mint and anise if I don't know what the greatest commandment is?
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What good is it to be so scrupulous in my life of obedience if I don't know the most important thing, because I know that if I obey in all these lesser matters, but fail to obey in the greatest commandment, that I am lost and ruined.
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So what is the greatest commandment? What's the first commandment of all? And Jesus says, the first of all the commandments is, hear,
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O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the
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Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.
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This is the first commandment. Now, this, of course, is a reference to Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 30.
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Jesus answers it as the first commandment, and the scribe receives it as the first commandment.
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He says in response, verse 32, Teacher, you've spoken the truth, there is one
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God, there is no other but he. And what's the first commandment? You shall have no other gods before me.
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And so the scribe recognizes you have rightly understood the first commandment is actually the greatest commandment.
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And this greatest commandment requires not just withholding other gods before the
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Lord or having nothing else in the place of God, but it actually requires of me to love the
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Lord my God with all of my heart, with all of my soul, my mind and my strength.
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This is the first commandment. Now, of course, we know, and it's what we've been recounting for the past month as we've been talking about evangelical fear or this way of grace that enables us to walk by the
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Spirit and so fulfill the requirement of the law. It only comes by grace. And as G.
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Campbell Morgan said, it's only when grace enables us to keep the law that we're free from the law. And unless we've been enabled by grace, by the
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Spirit of God to walk in the way of the law, being freed from its condemnation, then we are in the flesh under the command and condemnation of the law.
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And we're not free from it. An example that he gave that I thought was quite helpful. He says a moral man, an upright man who lives according to the laws of his country is always free from arrest.
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He's living upright, and so he's free from condemnation. And so it is for those who have received the grace of God where we're free from condemnation because the
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Spirit is causing us to walk in uprightness, walk from one degree of glory to the next and ever greater conformity to Christ, who is the perfect embodiment of God's law.
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And so the question that we raise with this first commandment, the greatest commandment of all to love the
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Lord, our God, is this. Can we say that that was the
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Old Testament, that was Israel, that was what God required of his people, that was a burden neither they nor their fathers could bear.
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We are now in the new covenant era. We are now in the age of Christ. We are now free from this command.
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Can we say that? Can we say that God has somehow relinquished his command for this kind of worship?
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Can we say somehow that now, now in the fullness of time with the coming of Christ, that God said,
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I will share my glory with another, you may have other gods before me? Or is it now that the stakes are infinitely higher than they ever were before?
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In former times, God passed over ignorance, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent and believe on the
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Lord Jesus Christ. He will have no other gods before him. All of this is contained within Jesus' words.
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The first commandment is you shall love the Lord, your God. Well, how are we going to love the
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Lord, our God, unless we know the Lord, our God? How can we keep this first commandment without knowing him?
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If the first commandment is loving him with everything that we are, how can we do this without knowing him?
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Of course, this is coming right out of Deuteronomy. Notice what this is saying. You shall love the
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Lord, your God. It's your God. Thomas Watson did a good job of emphasizing this.
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Though God is addressing the corporate body of Israel on Mount Sinai, the commandments are written in the second person singular.
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You yourself shall have no other gods before me. He's addressing the mass of Israel, but he's not speaking to the crowd and hoping most will recognize the obligation.
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He's speaking to every individual. Surely, as I'm speaking in this room, I'm speaking to every individual sitting in every individual chair.
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You yourself shall have no other gods before the Lord, our God. You need this personal knowledge then.
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He can't be your dad's God, can't be your mom's God, can't be the God of your grandparents.
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That will not do. He must be your God, and you yourself are to have no other gods before him.
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There was about 20 -odd years or so where I didn't love Elisha. Why? Because I didn't know her.
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We'd never met. How could you love someone you've never met? How can you love someone you don't know?
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I didn't have an ounce of love for her, but I didn't know her, and so it is with the
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Lord. How can you love the Lord, your God, with all of your heart if you don't know him?
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With all of your soul if you don't know him? How can you love him with your mind, with your thoughts, your reflection, your view and enjoyment of this world if you don't know him?
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How can you love him with your strength, with your energy, with the waking of the day and the setting of the night if you've never met him?
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How can you love God and keep this great commandment, the first commandment of all, if you've never had an encountering with the
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Lord? The love of God to man, of course, is the sum of the gospel. Another quote from Colquhoun, the love of God to man is the sum of the gospel.
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God's great love poured out upon us in his Son by his Spirit. The love of God to man, that's the sum of the gospel, but the love of man to God, that's the sum of the law.
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The love of man to God is the sum of the law, so we are to love God. Deuteronomy 6,
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Deuteronomy 30, Matthew 7, Mark 12, we are to love the
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Lord our God. But we maintain that we cannot love him rightly, we cannot keep this commandment unless we know him.
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In order to love him as he commands, as he requires, he must first love us. We must be known by him if we have any hope of knowing him.
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We must be loved by him if we have any hope of loving him. We return the love that we receive from him.
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1 John 4, 19, we love him because he first loved us.
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It's an inextricable order in the life of a believer. You do not love God aright.
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But even so, you would not love God at all if he had not first loved you.
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That's the most liberating thing you could possibly hear, for it means that he did not love you for what you could have done.
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He does not fail to love you because of what you failed to do. He set his love upon you when you were yet an enemy.
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He is making you lovely because he set his love upon you, that's the gospel. So as Augustine said, to paraphrase, if we love
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God, we can do as we please. If we love God in this way, if we keep this commandment, you can do whatever you want to do.
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If you keep this commandment, go and do what you please. What sees fit to you if you love God in this way? For if you love
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God in this way, everything that you do, everything that you will think, everything that you see, all of the strength that you employ will be toward keeping this commandment, to love the
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Lord your God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love him and do what you will.
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When the love of God, in other words, is that governing principle in your life, when it's all you think, say, do, you will be yielded to his love.
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And the obedience then flows from that love. Because it's a love that you've received, your obedience flows from it.
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Love, in other words, is not a sentiment. To know God in this way becomes the controlling passion of your life.
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You surrender further, more sacrificially. You're given endurance to go further than you could have years prior.
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You're more patient and more enduring. You forbear more. You're willing to lose more. You're willing to put up with more.
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This is how love expresses itself in terms of obedience. To put another way, if you love me,
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Jesus says, keep my commandments. Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom.
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Let not the mighty man glory in his might, nor the rich man glory in his riches. But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands me and knows me.
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So the first commandment requires that we know God in order to glorify him.
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Secondly, the commandment forbids us glorifying any other. We must not glorify any other.
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Question 53, what is forbidden in the first commandment? Well, the first commandment forbids us to deny or not to worship and glorify the true
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God as God, and as our God. And it forbids us to give that worship and glory to any other.
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It is do him alone. The people of God are constantly surrounded by and drawn to false gods.
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It's the history, the tragic history of the people of Israel. Ancient gods, of course, were replete, and they were seen as having control over the bare necessities of life, fertility, rains for the harvest to come, any kind of agricultural or economic productivity, war, any hope of peace or even success or victory in war.
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These things were tied to gods, especially geographical gods. Gods were sort of localized deities.
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You were going from the shield or compass of one toward the boundary and protection of the other.
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And all of these gods then were worshipped in a very pragmatic way for very pragmatic reasons. Ancient worshippers were not drawn to the beauty of some carved idol.
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Some of you have maybe gone to art museums and you've seen the gods of the Assyrians or the
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Babylonians. You've seen the ancient reliefs of the Egyptians. These are not beautiful things that you're drawn to worship.
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Crocodile -headed statues, an ostrich -headed god, a god with the face of a rat.
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We're not so instinctively drawn to the beauty that we must worship these things. So why did it draw worship?
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Why did it compel worship and sacrifice, honor and ritual? Why? Because of this great desire.
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I don't have control over these things and I want to have control. And so if I worship this god, pay homage to this god, this god has control over that.
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This god is the god of fertility. This god is the god of harvest. This is the god of victory in war.
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This is the god of safe travel. This is the god of plenty. This is the god of love.
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And so all these gods were worshipped as a way of gaining control or receiving some sort of blessing or abundance.
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Of course, there not only were these gods that were beneficial, but there were also gods that were capricious, hostile.
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And so they had to be appeased. In other words, you have to give not just as a way of kind of maintaining favor with a predisposed or benevolent god, but you have a capricious or hostile god.
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And it's bloodthirsty. And you must sacrifice. You must pay homage. Otherwise, you'll be in harm's way.
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You must appease their anger, avert the outpouring of their wrath. And so you had both hostile and benevolent gods that required constant devotion, constant sacrifice, a maintenance of ritual.
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And this was a means to a desired end. It's why throughout the prophets, the idolatry of the people is likened to harlotry.
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Means to a desired end. There's no love. Men don't go to brothels to fall in love.
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It's means to a desired end. And this false worship is not a bond of love.
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Just means to an end. I need a harvest. I need to get to that country. I need this battle to be successful.
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Means to an end. And God says, it's prostitution. Not so among my people.
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You must love me. I will not be a means to an end.
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You will have nothing before me. I made you for myself. As we know from Acts 17, the pagan was always on the outlook for a new god to serve.
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Build an altar to all the gods that we've invented. And let's keep an altar for the god we haven't found yet. An altar to the unknown god.
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This endless thirst, this endless desire to always make sure your way was controlled, your desired end was in view.
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The pantheon ever increasing. Now, of course, in our day, we may not bow down to carved statues.
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We may not visit temples. But we can still be surrounded by many false gods.
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And we may even allow these false gods to take the place of the one true living God. Idols are still worshipped for the very same reasons.
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The statues have changed. The rituals have changed. The mechanism, the goal, the whole purpose has not changed.
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What drives human beings to idolatry has not changed. Just the methods and the form.
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That's all that's changed. We still seek control, manipulation, fortune, luck.
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But we seek somehow to sacrifice in a way that we can have our way. But of course, idolatry is a way of actually being bound and dragged away to the way of this falsehood.
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Again, we can have a false god before the one true God if we glorify any other than him.
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Thomas Watson said it very simply. Anything that we trust more than God is our god. Anything you love more than God, that's your god.
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Anything you fear more than God, that's your god. What are you afraid of losing?
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Anything you love. What are you daydreaming about? What are you most hopeful for? Who is the god that you serve?
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There is no other to serve. That's what the first commandment explicitly says. You will have no other gods before me.
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There is no other god before me. He says in Isaiah 43, before me there is no god formed.
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There shall be none after me. I, even I am the Lord. Besides me there's no other. There is no other god, but men fashion gods for themselves.
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Men seeking control, seeking their own will, seeking to glorify and luxurize their flesh, they fashion gods for themselves.
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They cut the log, as it were, into pieces, burn some for heat, burn some to cook upon. Then they fall down and worship that last piece.
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He says I'm the first, I'm the last. Besides me there is no god.
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Moses says in Deuteronomy 4, therefore know this day, consider it in your heart, the Lord himself is
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God in heaven above and on earth beneath. There is no other. I know of no other rock, Moses says.
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There is no other god. Moses came out of the palace halls of Egypt surrounded by reliefs of hundreds of deities.
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He came to realize in the Midian desert there is no god but one. There is one god.
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Him alone will I serve. So what is this commandment built upon? What do we see here?
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The commandment is built upon I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
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In other words, we dare not separate this command have no other gods before me from how
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God prefaces this command. I am the Lord God who brought you out of the house of bondage.
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You know, implicitly or between the command in that prologue is a massive, therefore, you must have no other god before me.
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Why? Because I'm the God who rescued you from bondage. You are serving false gods, enslaved to their will, capricious gods out to get you.
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I rescued you from your idols. Therefore, have no other gods before me. I'm not only your maker, that's reason enough.
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I'm your redeemer. God acted in history for the sake of Israel, for the sake of his promise to Abraham.
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God delivered Israel, made them his own people. He singled them out, he distinguished them among all the nations of the world to be his own.
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In other words, the people of God were rescued into an exclusive relationship with him. No wonder then that God requires of them exclusive worship.
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I have saved you from bondage. I've rescued you to be a people unto me.
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Therefore, have nothing else before me. You were rescued by me for myself to be my own peculiar treasure on this earth.
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A royal priesthood, a kingdom of priests to bring about my will in this created realm.
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It's why God compares his relationship to his people as a marriage. Throughout the scripture,
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God speaks to himself as the bridegroom of Israel. And of course, the prophets prosecute
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Israel as a bride that is like a she -camel sniffing in the wind, if you understand the picture.
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This marriage relationship is used metaphorically of a relationship between God and his chosen ones. Why? Because marriage is a relationship that by virtue of being in this relationship, all other relationships are excluded in that way.
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This relationship of love and intimacy is such that no other relationship may intrude upon it.
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I have wed you, he is saying. Have no one else before me. The freedom which
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God has given the Israelites was the freedom to worship him in this way, to worship him alone, to enjoy and know him and love him exclusively.
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James chapter one spends a lot of time actually little passing flares of Exodus imagery.
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And of course, we see that with verse 25, this royal law of liberty. Now, why is
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James speaking of the law as royal? Well, if we're in Exodus 19 and 20 territory, it's because he understands that Israel is to be a kingdom of priests.
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And this consecrated kingdom of priests was given then a royal law. But what kind of law is it?
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A law of condemnation? A heavy yoke that they're gonna have to cast off?
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No, James says it's a law of liberty. A royal law, a law of liberty. How can
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James think that out? Of course, he's showing that obedience to the law in the life of a believer.
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It's not a thing of slavish fear, but rather something that the spirit is producing.
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James, of course, is more of a wisdom, in the genre of wisdom literature, the way that it's written and the way that it keeps revolving and recurring themes and motifs.
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J .A. Packer, tremendous book, Growing in Christ. He kind of opens us up a bit. The God who redeemed
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Jews from Egyptian slavery has redeemed Christians from the bondage of sin to Satan. And he did it by the cost of Calvary.
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Now, it is by keeping his law that the liberty he has secured for us is preserved.
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We don't do this by our flesh under condemnation. We do it by the spirit as a rule of life. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, but if you would not return again to a yoke of slavery, walk in this law of liberty.
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This rule of life will preserve the freedom that Christ has purchased for you. This was true for Israel.
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At a typical level, God told them that obedience would mean, instead of captivity, in a land that was not theirs, in the darkness of their taskmasters, it would mean long life in a land which the
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Lord, your God, will give you. Why? Because he gives steadfast love to thousands of those who love him and keep his commands.
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For Israel, then, as for Christians now, this is Packer writing, the deeper truth is this.
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Keeping God's law brings the deepest freedom. That is why
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James calls it the law of liberty. Law -keeping is the life for which we were fitted by nature.
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When God made Adam, this law was in his heart.
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This law was the structure that his life was to manifest.
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This is what it would mean to be a human being. This is what it would mean to bear the image of God.
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If the law reflects the character of God in all of its perfections, then man, as image -bearer, would perfectly fulfill or realize or manifest that law.
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That's why God wrote it in our hearts in creation. So man, by nature, was fitted for this law -keeping life.
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It was as natural for unfallen man as blinking and breathing until man sinned and rebelled against God.
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And now it was completely and utterly impossible. Sin, in other words, unfitted us for this law -keeping life.
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But grace refits us. The life that God loves to see and reward is this liberty.
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And we walk in the liberty that Christ has procured as we keep his law. So obedience to the law for the believer has always been in the context of this loving, covenantal relationship with the
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Lord God. It's always been by grace. You can't read Exodus 20 any other way.
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I'm the Lord who delivered you from the house of bondage. Therefore, have no other gods before me. This is not some abstract command that comes down from the heavenly
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HQ. And we have no meaningful relationship or regard for him. He's the one who's redeemed us.
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Therefore, how could we have any other God before him? Why would we? How dare we?
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Lord, forbid it, Lord. I would never have any other but you. Whom do I have on earth besides you?
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Obedience to the law for the believer has always been in this context of a loving, covenantal relationship.
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The law was never given, never intended, never functioned as a way that God would bring us into a relationship with him.
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But rather by his grace, by his deliverance, he established a relationship and then gave us a law.
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It's vital that we don't mix the two up. The law was never a way into a relationship with God.
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But it's because of a relationship we have with God by his grace that then we are given this law.
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I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
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You shall have no other gods before me. Our obedience, in other words, is constrained when we remember what we've been saved from.
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This first commandment to an unbelieving mind seems tyrannical, despotic.
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Why does this divine tyrant make this kind of demand upon my life, threaten me with punishment?
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Do you ever listen to debates of the late Christopher Hitchens as he'd go around and debate different Christians? I used to, when
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I was working at the warehouse, I'd listen to a lot of debates, listen to many, many hours of Christopher Hitchens, just to have some impulse of what an unbelieving mind that was very articulate and thoughtful would present as arguments against the
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Lord God. It was sort of preparing apologetics. And this was always the sort of pinching point for him.
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How dare the God who makes me put this kind of demand on my life when
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I'm unable to do it and then threaten me with punishment when I can't do it? How can I trust or love this
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God who commands me to love Him, but if I don't love Him, He threatens me with hell? Well, that's the dilemma for a fallen man.
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But for the believer, we say, no, no, no. You've missed it all. You've missed it all.
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We were rescued from our bondage to sin. We were on the way to hell. Now, he said,
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I'm the Lord who rescued you. When you were rebelling against me, hating me, fleeing me, blaspheming me, when you were my enemy, hating me,
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I sent my precious Son to shed His blood for your soul. And I said in light of that, love me.
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Don't have any other God again. Don't go back to the land of bondage. Don't become a slave.
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It's not the divine tyrant. It's the divine lover, the divine husband, the rescuer, the redeemer who gives us this command.
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Our obedience to God becomes constrained, heartfelt, intrinsic, inherent when we recognize the bondage we've been rescued from.
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If you have not been rescued from the bondage of sin, you'll have no desire to keep this command. But if you've been rescued from the bondage of your sin, if you've been brought out of darkness into light, you will never want to go back to that darkness again.
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You'll never make your way back to Egypt. Now that you've been freed to live for Him, your desire will be to live for Him.
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We may not bow down to carved statues and temples in our day, but there are many false gods that encroach upon the place of the one true
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God. And He is a jealous God, and He is righteously so.
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He alone is worthy of all glory. He alone is righteous to be jealous for His worship.
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You and I have no right to be jealous for admiration, jealous for praise.
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We're not worthy. We would, like John, bow down before angels, and the angels would kick us in the gut and say, stand up, you're gonna get us both in trouble.
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Angels aren't worthy of worship. Though they are sinless, they are created beings.
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They are not worthy of worship. They have no right to be jealous for glory. God alone has a right.
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He must be jealous for His glory. He is worthy of it. My glory,
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He says, I will not share with another. You know, you children, you have,
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I'm sure, a hard time day by day learning how to share with your friends or share with your siblings.
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It always warms my heart when I see brothers and sisters sharing freely. It's a beautiful thing.
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It means you're being taught well, and you're being thoughtful. And it would be very wrong for you to not share the things that are given to you, right?
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If you're given some special treat, you're given a nice box of donuts, it's wrong for you to say, these are all mine.
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I will not share them with another. That's wrong for you. But God is not like you.
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God is not like anything that He has made. And when God says, all praise is mine, everything that you love, that you adore, that you seek, that you desire, that you dream about, that you thirst for, that you hope in, that belongs to me.
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And I will not share it. God is right to say that. It's never wrong for God to not share.
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It's never wrong for Him to say, I will not share what belongs to Him. We must not glorify any other.
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The Lord alone is God. Him only shall you worship. Him only shall you serve.
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And then the third point connected to that. First point, we must know
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God in order to glorify Him. Secondly, we must not glorify any other. Thirdly, unless we glorify
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God, we will perish. What are we especially taught by these words before me in the first commandment?
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This is question 54. These words before me in the first commandment teach us that God, who sees all things, takes notice of and is much displeased with the sin of having any other
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God. Now that is a sort of flowery 17th century way of putting it, much displeased.
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God is angry. God is angry when we put any
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God before Him. We have these words before me.
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The Hebrew, it's idiomatic. It's literally before my face. And so it's not a matter of order.
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Don't have any gods, you know, have your gods underneath, right? You know, I have to be first place.
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Then you can have second, third, fourth, fifth place. Just don't have anything ahead of me. No, no, don't have any gods before my face.
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Don't let me behold any other God in your midst. Don't let me see your heart beholden to any other but me.
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Nothing else before me. That's what I want to see. It's before my face, before me.
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And that's why the Catechism rightly says it teaches us that He sees all things. He takes notice of all things.
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He's displeased with this sin of idolatry, of harlotry. When we look at Deuteronomy 30, and Moses is really, he's elaborating on this first commandment.
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And all that comes with it. All that comes with all the law of God and all that unfolds in Exodus 20 and the exposition of it in the following chapters and Leviticus 19 and Deuteronomy 5.
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And here in Deuteronomy 30, there's sort of this summary statement. This commandment which
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I command you today is not too mysterious for you. Here's the commandment.
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It's not too mysterious for you. What mystical, metaphorical meaning could this possibly be to have no other
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God before God? It's not mysterious. Whatever you're loving, whatever you're trusting in, whatever you're working toward, if that has any place in your heart, in your affections, in your will, more than God, you are breaking this first commandment.
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This commandment is not too mysterious for you. It's not far off. It's not in heaven that you should say, who's gonna ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it.
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It's not beyond the sea. It's not in the depths that you should say, who will go over the sea and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it.
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But the word is very near you, in your mouth, in your heart, that you may do it.
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Now you see what's being said here in Deuteronomy 30. Though God spoke on this fiery mountain with the voice of thunder that filled his people with terror, this is not something that you have to go on some monk -like journey, 3 ,000 miles, and after three years of not speaking, you receive some mysterious insight that will give you the way forward in life.
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No, it's not that mysterious. You don't have to somehow climb your way into heaven to hear this word and to do it.
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You don't somehow have to descend across the seas or go to the very depths of the abyss in order to hear this word and to do it.
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It's not that mysterious. It's very near you, in fact, in your mouth, in your heart, that you may do it.
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See, I've set before you today life, good, death, evil, and I command you today, love the
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Lord your God, walk in His ways, keep His commandments, His statutes,
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His judgments, that you may multiply and live, that the Lord your God will bless you in the land which
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He gives you to possess. But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear and you're drawn away and you worship other gods and serve them,
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I announce to you today, and this is
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Deuteronomy 30, but I'm saying this, I'm announcing to you today, if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, you will perish, you will perish.
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Why? Because God is much displeased with the sin of having any other
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God. Notice that He says, if your heart turns away, and what did
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Jesus say was the first commandment? To love the Lord your God with all your heart. And if your heart turns away and you don't love the
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Lord your God in this way, you will not hear, and what's the effect of that? You will worship other gods and serve them.
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That's all contained here. If your heart turns away so that you do not hear and are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them.
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This is the reality. Do you think there's any gray area or neutrality between the two?
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There's not. If you do not love the Lord your
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God in keeping this commandment of having no other God before Him, then the only other alternative is your heart has turned from the
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God who made you, the God who would be your redeemer, you are drawn away worshiping and serving other gods.
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That's the only possibility. Let me give you some examples of this.
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The same idea is found in Judges 2 .17 as an example. Why did God give judges to the
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Israelites? To teach them His will, so that they would abide in His way. But did they hear those judges,
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Judges 2? They would not listen. They played the harlot with other gods.
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That's always the effect of not hearing the word. There is no other alternative.
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They would not listen. They played the harlot with other gods, bowed down to them. They turned quickly from the way in which their fathers walked in obeying the commandments of the
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Lord. They did not do so. So it's a turning away, it's a quick turning away.
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As quick as leaving this afternoon. Hearing, but not listening. And as quickly as you leave today, where do you leave to go?
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To go bow down and serve these other gods in your life. 1 Kings 11, Solomon had 700 wives.
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I would not want to do marriage counseling with Solomon. Thank God for that. Solomon had 700 wives, princesses, 300 concubines.
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What was the effect of all of these loves and affections in his harem? What was the effect of it?
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His wives turned away his heart. It was so when Solomon was old that his wives turned his heart after other gods.
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That's what a turning of the heart looks like. There's no neutrality here. If your heart is not in love with God, serving
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God, your heart is in bondage to other gods serving them. Solomon's heart was turned to other gods.
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His heart was not loyal to the Lord, his God. His heart was not the heart of his father, David. So this picture of idolatry, this whole requirement of the first commandment, it boils down to loving the
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Lord our God. What does it look like to love the Lord your God? You have no other gods. But if you fail to love the
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Lord your God, you bow down and worship other gods. You have 700 other gods.
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You have a harem of other gods that you serve, and they make your heart disloyal to the God who made you. Jeremiah 13, the
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Lord said to me, go and get yourself a linen sash. Put it around your waist, but don't put it in water.
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This is a beautiful sash, finely woven linen. Don't destroy it.
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Don't make it damp, but keep it pristine and nice. All right, if Jeremiah was walking among us with this beautiful linen sash, and little children after lunch walked up with greasy hands, and he'd kind of be dodging them and getting them away, don't mess up this beautiful garment around my waist.
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And the word of the Lord came the second time saying, take the sash, which is around your waist, arise and go to the
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Euphrates, go to the river, hide it in a hole in the rock. And so I went to the great river as the
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Lord commanded, and it came to pass after many days, he said, go back to the Euphrates and take that sash, which
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I commanded you to hide. And so I went and I dug, I'll give you a picture. He's digging this thing out of the dirt and the muck and the mud.
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And I took the sash from the place where I had hidden it, and there was the sash, ruined, profitable for nothing.
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Soiled, threadbare, stench, falling apart, he can barely tie it, he feels disgusting to have it around him, profitable for nothing.
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And the word of the Lord came to me saying, in this manner, I will ruin the pride of Judah, the great pride of Jerusalem, this evil people who refuse to hear my words.
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What's the effect of not hearing God's word? What have we been rehearsing? This evil people who refuse to hear my words, who follow the dictates of their hearts, and walk after other gods to serve them.
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To not hear is to turn, to turn is to worship other gods. For as this sash clings to the waist of a man, so I've caused the whole house of Israel, the whole house of Judah to cling to me, he says.
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You were that glorious, high, priestly sash, I wore you around my waist, but you wouldn't hear and you became soiled, and you began to stink, and you began to fall apart, and I was ashamed to have you.
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I tied you around my waist, he says, that you would be my people, for my renown, for my praise, for my glory, but you wouldn't hear.
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You see what he's saying? God is saying, you wouldn't hear, and so your heart turned.
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And because you wouldn't hear and your heart turned, you just served other gods, you had other gods before me.
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But I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me. This is the inescapable reality of being human.
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This is what it means to be made by God. What does Ecclesiastes say? God's put eternity in our hearts, which means we all have some interest, some spark, some draw, at least for a time, maybe a short time, maybe a short season that never returns in our life, but I'm convinced at one time or the other, by virtue of being human, you have some desire, thirst, acknowledgement, longing for what is beyond, what is transcendent, what is infinite.
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You know it in your bones, like every primitive society, no matter how far back in history you go, no matter to what remotest region of the earth you go, every society believed in the transcendent, in the after, in the gods.
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But we know the true and living God. Fallen man, of course, does not seek God in truth, nor can he.
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He runs from God, flees from God, hides from God. If he's being honest with himself, he hates
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God, but he must serve a God. He must serve.
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He doesn't choose to worship any more than he chooses to breathe. This is how he lives, this is what he was made to do.
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He was made to be a worshiper, and so he must worship. And if he will not worship the living
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God, the only God worthy of worship, then he must create gods to worship. He must turn to idols to worship.
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He must go after some kind of God. It's what it means to be human. Ignorance was the only excuse that God gave for his forbearance, as we alluded to.
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Peter said, that time is past. The former times God overlooked, that time has ended.
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Which means if you are in a place now where God is being heard, but you refuse to hear, you have no excuse before him.
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I say to you this day, if you do not hear him, you will perish.
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The God of this world, Satan blinds the minds of the unbelieving, 2 Corinthians 4, 4.
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What's the effect of this darkness, this blinded thinking, this blinded outlook, this blinded worldview?
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They cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Have you seen that?
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Have you seen the difference between the two? I have, God knows I have. Have you sat three feet away from someone?
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Who can only see darkness, and their mind has been blinded.
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But they're talking with you as if they've seen the light. Have you sat across from someone free, unchained, under the blood?
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To see them pretend to be as free and as unchained. And they don't recognize that soiled linen, those dark chains, the master pulling them whenever he sees fit, have you seen that?
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Fallen man substitutes the gods of his own depraved desires and imagination, and he forces them onto a throne that belongs only to the living
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God. And it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
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You think, that's not true. That's not really how drastic it is.
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It doesn't really feel that way at all. It, those worshipers, I mean, think of Molech.
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I am a good person. I'm decent. Actually, a lot of people think quite well of me.
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I'm the most prized in my circle of friends. I'm always helpful. And I would never, ever drag my toddler to the furnace of Molech.
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The horror, the abomination. These people were backward and evil. I'm such a good person.
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You're as good as the smiling actress holding her little idol. It's an
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Oscar trophy. And she's saying, I'm so glad. I'm so glad I could dismember my baby to have this
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God, to have this fame, to have this wealth. That's what it looks like to have a blinded mind and go serving after other gods.
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You've heard of Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome is, I believe it was something in maybe the 1970s where there was a bank heist in Stockholm in Sweden.
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And the people that were running the heist and making these threats and these demands actually somehow had this effect of gaining the sympathy of the people they were holding captive.
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So they're there with assault rifles, making them sit, trembling in fear. But over the course of this time, those that are in bondage actually begin to sympathize with them.
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You know, I feel so bad for them. They do deserve these demands. Maybe it's good that we're here bound up with a rifle in front of our face.
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And so there's this thing called Stockholm syndrome. You begin to empathize and even love and admire your captor, your tyrant, your brutalizer.
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Every idolater is sick with Stockholm syndrome. You love the chains that bind you.
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You love them. You hate them. If only I could be rid of it.
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I would do anything. You wouldn't do the least thing. You hate your master so much that you love him and you'd never leave him.
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He torments you and he takes everything from you, but you'd never leave him. You love him. You young people need to listen very carefully because with youth and age, you don't realize how deep, how long, and how interconnected chains of bondage really are.
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There's this way that the chains kind of lay hidden. And when you're young, you always think,
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I have control. I might dapple, but this is kind of a rite of passage. This is what it's like growing up. So I try this, try there, but I'm never gonna lose control.
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I'll never go too far. I'll never be in too deep. I'm not gonna go after other gods, no.
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Just kind of going through, and you know, I'm a Christian, you know, and someday
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I'll be more serious, but I'm young, so that's okay. So it's okay that I'm like this. You don't realize these chains, which feel so slack and loose, are only slack and loose because the master hasn't yanked yet.
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I remember, see, I never saw the movie, but I saw a scene. I think it's called Hurt Locker, about this sniper in Afghanistan.
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No, he's not a sniper. I think he was a bomb squad. And so he'd be called in to sort of disarm
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IEDs. And there was this one scene I remember. It was a very famous scene where he was sort of crawling.
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He has all his gear on, and they've uncovered in the middle of the street this IED, this bomb on the route of a convoy.
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So he's there to disarm it. And he's looking very carefully to make sure he knows all the wires that connect. And he thinks he sort of has the one, and as he begins to pull it away, it shows that there's a dozen lines that are coming with it, and all the dirt is being sifted off the top of them, and he's just filled with this horror.
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What he thought was just this one little line that he had to loosen. When he began to pull this explosive that was going to take his own life, he then was filled with horror to see there was connected with it 12 other lines.
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And that's what it's like to go after other gods. You think, as long as I have this little area controlled, it's okay,
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I'll know how to get out, I'll know how to escape. And you just are so blinded to the pit that you are in.
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So look at what Moses is pleading. In Deuteronomy 30, he's pleading. You've heard.
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You've heard. You don't have to go across the sea. You don't have to climb into heaven to hear it, to do it.
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You've heard it. I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you.
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I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life, so that you and your descendants will live.
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That you may love the Lord your God, obey his voice. Cling to him, just as he wanted to cling that linen sash around his waist.
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Cling to him. He is your life, the length of your days, that you can dwell in the land he gives you.
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Fulfill the promise he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And when we recount this commandment and we speak of the bondage and the only result possible for hearing but not listening, for turning away and not loving
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God and serving other idols, the only other alternative is death. And Moses is saying to his people, choose life.
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Choose life. The Lord is your life. The Lord made you. The Lord alone you are to love.
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Every other love is a liar. Every other idolater is a taskmaster. Every other luxury and comfort or means of control is a mechanism for your destruction.
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Don't be dragged down to hell with them. Choose life. Unless you glorify
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God, you will perish. To have no other God means you can only have the one true
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God. Now, if you're hearing and you want to listen and you don't want to perish, how are you going to have the one true
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God? Well, the Bible makes it abundantly clear there's no way to have God unless you come to him through the
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Lord Jesus Christ. This God -given inclination for worshiping is twisted and warped by our sinfulness and it can never be straightened out and clarified and realized and fulfilled and satisfied until you come to God through Christ.
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The Bible tells us there's one God, but there's one mediator between him and man, the
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Lord Christ. There are no others. Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life.
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No one comes to the Father except through Jesus. The Apostle John says whoever denies the
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Son doesn't have the Father, but he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also. In Moses, Paul says in Romans 10,
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Moses, what we just read in Deuteronomy 30, when Moses writes about the righteousness of the law, the man who does these things shall live by them, what does he say?
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Paul says, the righteousness of faith speaks in this way. The righteousness of faith speaks in this way.
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When Paul reads Deuteronomy 30, he doesn't say, oh, I've gotta work a lot harder. Maybe one day these chains will keep me in bondage.
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I better work really hard and make all these resolutions that I won't be controlled by them. My friend, my friend, my friend, have you heard nothing we've said for the past month about grace and law?
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What Hebrews 12, 28 says, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably.
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So when Paul reads Deuteronomy 30, he reads it with the lens of the gospel. He says, when
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Moses was making this plea to choose life, he wasn't offering the law as a means to life.
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Paul knows better than anyone, the law can't give life, only the Spirit gives life. So when
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Paul's reading Deuteronomy 30, he says, the righteousness of faith speaks in this way.
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Don't say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, which is to bring
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Christ down from above. We can't climb into heaven, but God can send his son down from heaven to us.
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Or don't say in your heart, who will descend into the abyss? In other words, what is Deuteronomy asking? How can we hear it and do it?
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We can't climb up to heaven, we can't go to the abyss. How are we gonna hear it and do it?
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If we don't do it, we perish, so how can we do it? And Paul says, the righteousness of faith speaks in this way.
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Don't say who will go up into heaven, that is Christ coming down, that's how you do it.
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Don't say who will go into the abyss, which is to say Christ rising from the depths. But what does it say?
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The word is near you, in your mouth, in your heart, that is the word of faith which we preach.
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That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
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You are not the one that has to climb, you are not the one that has to descend, you are not the one that has to purify the linen sash.
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God sent his son, God rose his son from the dead. God put his son on the cross and his blood purified that soiled linen, made it pure, spotless, bright, to be a holy covering for all of our guilt and sin.
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How are you gonna hear and do it? Paul says by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you call to him, you will be saved.
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Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. So this commandment, this first, this great commandment to love the
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Lord our God with all of our mind, heart, soul, and strength, it is not possible apart from Christ.
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It's given to us to draw us to Christ. And having been drawn to Christ and rescued by Christ, this will be the song of your heart.
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This will be the delight of your days. The only thing you will regret in your life, as we think of Thomas Watts in his last sentence in our reading yesterday.
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The only thing you will regret on your deathbed is that you hadn't kept this commandment more faithfully, more purely, more consistently, more fervently.
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That'll be your only regret. To love the Lord your God with all your mind, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.
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Why would God make that amand upon your life unless you were made for it? Because you were made for it, though ruined by the fall,
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Christ came so that you would be restored to it. And the great glory of this commandment is that the day will come when that law will be fully realized.
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In this world, in this life, we resist many idols, many false ways, the cries and siren voices of many false gods.
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But the day is fixed, a day of great hope, a day of glory, when this commandment will fill the new heavens and the new earth like the waters cover the sea.
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The waters are the sea. There'll be no splinter of a shadow of anything less than this commandment being consummated on that day of glory.
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Is that your hope as a Christian? The day is fixed, the day is appointed and fast coming when no other
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God will be known, will be embraced, will be adored, will be tempting to the redeemed who encircle the throne of the slain lamb and say, worthy, worthy, worthy alone are you.
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God, in other words, will root out all of his rivals, every rival lover in your life, every rogue affection in your heart, every tempting way that causes you to stumble and stray.
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The day is fixed when he will crush all of them, turn them into powder. When though this bridal sash, as it were, is still filled with blemishes and wrinkles, the day is fixed when it's made pure, radiant, white, gleaming, when we're fit like angels to serve
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God aright. Is that your hope as a Christian? Such a hope does not disappoint.
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But until that day, you must know God if you would glorify him.
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And you must not glorify any other. And unless you glorify God alone, you won't make it there, you'll perish.
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But if you call upon the name of the Lord, if you confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you will be saved to everlasting, never to perish.
01:05:36
And the day will come where this commandment will be blinking and breathing.
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It will be intrinsic and delightful to your soul. I wanna see you there. I wanna see every one of you there.
01:05:52
Pains my heart to think some of us might be missing on that day. Amen? Let's pray.
01:06:05
Thank you, Lord, for your law. Thank you, Lord, not just for what it requires and what it forbids, but Lord, what it promises.
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A future hope of glory. To be remade like Adam with this inherent, natural instinct and love and effortless flow of your law in and through us.
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But unlike Adam in that we'll never be able to lose it. We'll never be able to fall again.
01:06:32
We'll be confirmed, secure, everlasting. Lord, where we have refused to listen, refused to hear, and we've turned our heart from you, set our heart, set our love, set our soul, our strength, our mind on other things.
01:06:52
Forgive us, Lord. Forgive us for the idols we bow down and serve. Forgive us for the rebellion and the treachery,
01:07:01
Lord, of affections that would stray, of listening to rival voices, rival offers that are empty, illusory daydreams of ruin.
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When you alone have the words of life. When you offer what you alone can fulfill.
01:07:17
You promise what you will actually keep. The world is filled with promises that are empty.
01:07:23
God, break away anyone, any youth in this room, especially, Lord, that is in Stockholm syndrome with their idols,
01:07:31
Lord. They love their captivity. They haven't felt the bitterness of it yet. Oh God, rescue them even at this young age.
01:07:37
Prevent years of sorrow, Lord, but if not that, Lord, give them years of sorrow to prevent them everlasting sorrow.
01:07:46
We would be those, Lord, who have tasted and seen your goodness. We would be those who delight in your law.
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Those who have no other God before you. How could we? You are the one who rescued us from bondage by the blood of your own