The First Commandment

Well, this morning we begin now the Ten Commandments that we've been preparing for for quite some.

Time.

We began Exodus, of course, with this endeavor to make it through chapter 20 before we took a break and went to the 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 Sermon on the Mount.

We have even more focus and more depth on understanding the role of the law in our lives as Christians. 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.

The First Commandment and the Baptist Catechism

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. 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.

And some of the commandments have some additional information with them. And that's partly to familiarize ourselves with the Baptist Catechism. Of course, it's a wonderful tool and resource to help us work through portions of Scripture like this.

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. And so let's begin by reading in Exodus 20, verses 1 through 3.

And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. Well, this First Commandment gives us really three things to consider this morning.

First, this First Commandment teaches us that we must know God in order to glorify Him. We must know God in order to glorify Him. Secondly, we must not glorify any other. We must not glorify any other.

And then third, unless we glorify God alone, we will perish. Unless we glorify God alone, we will perish. This is how we'll look at the First Commandment. So first, we must know God in order to glorify Him.

What's required in the First Commandment? This is our Catechism number 52. The First Commandment requires us to know and to acknowledge God, to be the only true God and our God, and to worship and glorify Him accordingly.

And so we're really emphasizing that very first part. The First Commandment requires us to know God, to acknowledge Him as the only true and living God, for Him to be our God, to worship Him as our God, the only God, and to have no other gods before Him.

Now, of course, the whole law of God is going to reverberate throughout the Scriptures. The law is a summation of not only God's perfect character, but all that God requires of His creatures. The moral law is summed up by these Ten Commandments, these Ten Words.

And though it's extended throughout the 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. Joel Beakey recently reprinted his work on Grace and Law, a tremendous, tremendous book.

But John Colquhoun, and he says, So extensive are the commandments in the Word of God, that everything which 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.

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. 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. Really the first table of the law, the first four commandments, begin with this foundational.

Commandment.

You shall have no other gods before me. What does that look like? What does that First Commandment express itself like? 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 God, more importantly, how we do not see God or imagine God to be like. He's unlike anything that He has made. How we speak of God or how we hear about God, the Third Commandment.

Our time and our relation of worship to God. All of these ways are embedded within even this First Commandment. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall glorify me and know me in this way. This is the first table of the law.

Christ, the Greatest Commandment, and Love for God

When Jesus is rebuffing the scribes that come to Him, you can imagine these little think tanks. The scribes and the 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 Lord.

Jesus.

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 Jesus.

And every now and then, one of the brighter bulbs in the bunch says, I've got it. The Sadducees say, we have an idea, let's nail Him on the resurrection. So they go to Jesus and they want to entrap Him with this question about the resurrection.

And Jesus confounds them. 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? And in Mark 12, Jesus goes to the writings of Moses to show them, indeed, He is the God.

Of the living.

And so all those nights, all those hours of entrapping questions are cut in half instantly and they all go away sunken. 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 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. 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, 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. He risks being shunned by his friends. He really has a question he wants to know the answer to, 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?

What's the greatest commandment? Mark says that he perceived he had answered well, so this is an honest question. Now, I want you to know that most people in the world today don't want to ask Jesus honest.

Questions.

They're a lot like the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the scribes. They have a lot of questions about Christianity. 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. They're not being honest. But this scribe has an honest question, and Jesus will give him an honest answer.

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. What good is it to tithe dill and mint and anise if I don't know what the greatest commandment.

Is?

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.

So what is the greatest commandment? What's the first commandment of all? And Jesus says, the first of all the commandments is, hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.

This is the first commandment. Now this, of course, is a reference to Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 30. Jesus answers it as the first commandment, and the scribe receives it as the first commandment. He says in response, verse 32, Teacher, you've spoken the truth, there is one God, there is no other but He.

And what's the first commandment? You shall have no other gods before me. And so the scribe recognizes you have rightly understood the first commandment is actually the greatest commandment. And this greatest commandment requires not just withholding other gods before the Lord or having nothing else in the place of God, but it actually requires of me to love the Lord my God with all of my heart, with all of my soul, my mind, and my strength.

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 Spirit and so fulfill the requirements of the law, it only comes by grace.

And as G. Campbell Morgan said, it's only when grace enables us to keep the law that we're free from the law. Unless we've been enabled by grace, by the 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.

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. He's living upright and so he's free from condemnation.

And so it is for those who have received the grace of God, we're free from condemnation because the Spirit is causing us to walk in uprightness, walk from one degree of glory to the next in ever greater conformity to Christ who is the perfect embodiment of God's.

Law.

And so the question that we raise with this first commandment, the greatest commandment of all, to love the Lord our God, is this. Can we say that that was the Old Testament? That was Israel. That was what God required of His people.

That was a burden neither they nor their fathers could bear. We are now in the new covenant era. We are now in the age of Christ. We are now free from this command. Can we say that? Can we say that God has somehow relinquished His command for this kind of worship?

Can we say somehow that now, now in the fullness of time with the coming of Christ that God said, 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?

In former times, God passed over ignorance, but now He commands all men everywhere to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He will have no other gods before Him. All of this is contained within Jesus' words.

The first commandment is you shall love the Lord your God. Well, how are we going to love the Lord our God unless we know the Lord our God? How can we keep this first commandment without knowing Him? If the first commandment is loving Him with everything that we are, how can we do this without knowing Him?

Of course, this is coming right out of Deuteronomy. Notice what this is saying. You shall love the Lord your God.

It's your God.

Thomas Watson did a good job of emphasizing this. Though God is addressing the corporate body of Israel on Mount Sinai, the commandments are written in the second person singular. 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. He's speaking to every individual, as surely as I'm speaking in this room, I'm speaking to every individual sitting in every individual chair.

You yourself shall have no other gods before the Lord our God. You need this personal knowledge then. He can't be your dad's God, can't be your mom's God, can't be the God of your grandparents. That will not do.

He must be your God, and you yourself are to have no other gods before Him. There was about 20-odd years or so where I didn't love Elisha.

Why?

Because I didn't know her. We'd never met. How could you love someone you've never met? How can you love someone you don't know? I didn't have an ounce of love for her, but I didn't know her, and so it is with the Lord.

How can you love the Lord your God with all of your heart if you don't know Him? 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?

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? How can you love God and keep this great commandment, the first commandment of all, if you've never had an encountering with the 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, right? 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. The love of man to God is the sum of the law, so we are to love God. Deuteronomy 6, Deuteronomy 30, Matthew 7, Mark 12.

We are to love the Lord our God, but we maintain that we cannot love Him rightly. We cannot keep this commandment unless we know Him. 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. We must be loved by Him if we have any hope of loving Him. We return the love that we receive from Him. 1 John 4, 19, we love Him because He first loved us.

It's an inextricable order in the life of a believer. You do not love God aright, but even so, you would not love God at all if He had not first.

Loved you.

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. 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.

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 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.

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 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 Lord your God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love Him and do what you will. 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.

And the obedience then flows from that love. Because it's a love that you've received, your obedience flows from it. Love in other words is not a sentiment. To know God in this way becomes the controlling passion of your life.

You surrender further, more sacrificially. You're given endurance to go further than you could have years prior. You're more patient and more enduring. You forbear more. You're willing to lose more. You're willing to put up with more.

This is how love expresses itself in terms of obedience. To put another way, if you love me, Jesus says, keep my commandments. Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom. 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. So the first commandment requires that we know God in order to glorify Him. Secondly, the commandment forbids us glorifying any other.

Idolatry as Harlotry and the Exclusivity of Worship

We must not glorify any other. Question 53. What is forbidden in the first commandment? The first commandment forbids us to deny or not to worship and glorify the true God as God and as our God. And it forbids us to give that worship and glory to any other.

It is do Him alone. The people of God are constantly surrounded by and drawn to false gods. 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.

These things were tied to gods, especially geographical gods. Gods were sort of localized deities. You were going from the shield or compass of one toward the boundary and protection of the other. And all of these gods then were worshipped in a very pragmatic way for very pragmatic.

Reasons.

Ancient worshipers were not drawn to the beauty of some carved idol. Some of you have maybe gone to art museums and you've seen the gods of the Assyrians or the Babylonians. You've seen the ancient reliefs of the Egyptians.

These are not beautiful things that you're drawn to worship. Crocodile-headed statues, an ostrich-headed god, a god with the face of a rat. We're not so instinctively drawn to the beauty that we must worship these things.

So why did it draw worship? Why did it compel worship and sacrifice, honor and ritual?

Why?

Because of this great desire. 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. This god is the god of fertility.

This god is the god of harvest. This is the god of victory in war. This is the god of safe travel. This is the god of plenty. This is the god of love. And so all these gods were worshipped as a way of gaining control or receiving some sort of blessing or abundance.

Of course, there not only were these gods that were beneficial, but there were also gods that were capricious, hostile. 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 and it's bloodthirsty and you must sacrifice.

You must pay homage, otherwise you'll be in harm's way. 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.

And this was a means to a desired end. It's why throughout the prophets that the idolatry of the people is likened to harlotry. Means to a desired end.

There's no love.

Men don't go to brothels to fall in love. It's means to a desired end. And this false worship is not a bond of love, just means to an end. I need a harvest. I need to get to that country. I need this battle to be successful.

Means to an end and God says it's prostitution. Not so among my people. You must love me. I will not be a means to an end. 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.

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. This endless thirst, this endless desire to always make sure your way was controlled, your desired end was in view.

The pantheon ever increasing. Now, of course, in our day we may not bow down to carve statues. We may not visit temples, but we can still be surrounded by many false gods 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 reason. The statues have changed. The rituals have changed. The mechanism, the goal, the whole purpose has not changed. What drives human beings to idolatry has not changed.

Just the methods in the form. That's all that's changed. We still seek control, manipulation, fortune, luck. 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.

Again, we can have a false god before the one true God if we glorify any other than.

Him.

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. Anything you fear more than God, that's your God. What are you afraid of losing?

Anything you love. What do you daydream about? What are you most hopeful for? Who is the God that you serve?

There is no other to serve.

That's what the first commandment explicitly says. You will have no other gods before me. There is no other God before me. He says in Isaiah 43, before me, there is no God formed. There shall be none after me.

I, even I am the Lord. Besides me, there's no other. There is no other God. Men fashion God for themselves. Men seeking control, seeking their own will, seeking to glorify and luxuriate their flesh. They fashion God for themselves.

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. He says, I'm the first.

I'm the last.

Besides me, there is no God. Moses says in Deuteronomy 4, therefore, know this day, consider it in your heart. The Lord himself is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. There is no other. I know of no other rock, Moses says.

There is no other God. Moses came out of the palace halls of Egypt, surrounded by reliefs of hundreds of deities. He came to realize in the Midian desert, there is no God but one. There is one God. Him alone will I serve.

So what is this commandment built upon? What do we see here? 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. In other words, we dare not separate this command, have no other gods before me, from how God prefaces this command.

I am the Lord God who brought you out of the house of bondage. You know, implicitly or between the command in that prologue is a massive, therefore, you must have no other God before me.

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. I rescued you from your idols. Therefore, have no other gods before me.

I'm not only your maker. That's reason enough. I'm your redeemer. God acted in history for the sake of Israel, for the sake of his promise to Abraham. 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. 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.

I have saved you from bondage. I've rescued you to be a people unto me. Therefore, have nothing else before me. You were rescued by me for myself to be my own peculiar treasure on this earth, a royal priesthood, a kingdom of priests to bring about my will in this created realm.

It's why God compares his relationship to his people as a marriage. Throughout scripture, God speaks to himself as the bridegroom of Israel. And, of course, the prophets prosecute Israel as a bride that is like a she-camel sniffing in the wind, if you understand the picture.

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. This relationship of love and intimacy is such that no other relationship may intrude upon it.

I have wed you, he is saying. Have no one else before me. The freedom which 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.

The Law of Liberty and Covenant Obedience

James chapter 1 spends a lot of time, actually, little passing flares of Exodus imagery. And, of course, we see that with verse 25, this royal law of liberty. Now, why is 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. And this consecrated kingdom of priests was given then a royal law. But what kind of law is it?

A law of condemnation? A heavy yoke that they're going to have to cast off? No, James says it's a law of liberty.

A royal law, a law of liberty.

How can James think that out? Of course, he's showing that obedience to the law in the life of a believer. It's not a thing of slavish fear, but rather something that the spirit is producing. James, of course, is more of a wisdom, you know, in the genre of wisdom literature, the way that it's written and the way that it keeps revolving and recurring themes and motifs.

J .A. Packer, tremendous book, Growing in Christ. He kind of opens this up a bit. The God who redeemed Jews from Egyptian slavery has redeemed Christians from the bondage of sin to Satan. And he did it by the cost of Calvary.

Now, it is by keeping his law that the liberty he has secured for us is preserved. 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. This rule of life will preserve the freedom that Christ has purchased for you. This was true for Israel. 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 Lord, your God, will give you.

Why?

Because he gives steadfast love to thousands of those who love him and keep his commands. For Israel, then, as for Christians now, this is Packer writing, the deeper truth is this, keeping God's law brings the deepest freedom.

That is why James calls it the law of liberty. Law-keeping is the life for which we were fitted by nature. When God made Adam, this law was in his heart. This law was the structure that his life was to manifest.

This is what it would mean to be a human being. This is what it would mean to bear the image of God. 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.

That's why God wrote it in our hearts in creation. So man, by nature, was fitted for this law-keeping life. It was as natural for unfallen man as blinking and breathing until man sinned and rebelled against God.

And now it was completely and utterly impossible. Sin, in other words, unfitted us for this law-keeping life. But grace refits us. The life that God loves to see and reward is this liberty. 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 Lord God. It's always been by grace. You can't read Exodus 20 any other way. 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 HQ. And we have no meaningful relationship or regard for him. He's the one who's redeemed us.

Therefore, how could we have any other God before him?

Why would we?

How dare we?

Lord, forbid it, Lord.

I would never have any other but you. Whom do I have on earth besides you? Obedience to the law for the believer has always been in this context of a loving covenantal relationship. The law was never given, never intended, never functioned as a way that God would bring us into a relationship with him.

But rather, by his grace, by his deliverance, he established a relationship and then gave us a law. It's vital that we don't mix the two up. The law was never a way into a relationship with God. But it's because of a relationship we have with God by his grace that then we are given.

This law.

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. Our obedience, in other words, is constrained when we remember what we've been saved from.

Idolatry, Blindness, and the Call to Choose Life

This first commandment to an unbelieving mind seems tyrannical, despotic. Why does this divine tyrant make this kind of demand upon my life, threaten me with punishment? Do you ever listen to debates of the late Christopher Hitchens as he'd go around and debate different Christians?

I used to, when I was working at the warehouse, I'd listen to a lot of debates, listened 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 Lord God.

It was sort of preparing apologetics. And this was always the sort of pinching point for him. How dare the God who makes me put this kind of demand on my life when 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 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. But for the believer, we say, no, no, no, you've missed it all.

You've missed it all. We were rescued from our bondage to sin. We were on the way to hell. Now, he said, 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.

I sent my precious son to shed his blood for your soul. And I said, in light of that, love me, don't have any other God again. Don't go back to the land of bondage. Don't become a slave. It's not the divine tyrant, it's the divine lover, the divine husband, the rescuer, the redeemer who gives us this command.

Our obedience to God becomes constrained, heartfelt, intrinsic, inherent when we recognize the bondage we've been rescued from. 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. 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. And 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 God.

And he is a jealous God. And he is righteously so. He alone is worthy of all glory. He alone is righteous to be jealous for his worship. You and I have no right to be jealous for admiration, jealous for praise.

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 going to get us both in trouble. Angels aren't worthy of worship, though they are sinless.

They are created beings. They are not worthy of worship. They have no right to be jealous for glory. God alone has a right. He must be jealous for his glory. He is worthy of it. My glory, he says, I will not share with another.

You know, you children, you have, I'm sure, a hard time day by day learning how to share with your friends or share with your siblings. It always warms my heart when I see brothers and sisters sharing freely.

It's a beautiful thing. 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? 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 and I will not share them with another. That's wrong for you. But God is not like you. 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.