No Other God - Exodus 20:1-3

INTRO

We are starting into the Ten Commandments today

These commandments, which occur three times in the Old Testament, literally means “ten words.”

Ten words given by God to his people on how to live in the world.

Depending on your past you may have some baggage when it comes to the Ten Words.

One night a family was doing a devotional that included the story of the Ten Commandments.

The Father looked at his son and asked, “How many commandments did God give to Moses?”

The five-year-old son, quickly replied, “Too many!”

Maybe that’s you this morning.

Perhaps when you hear ten commandments you feel that they are stodgy or old.

Some feel like the commanmdents are a list of rules is a stuffy set of obligations given by a grumpy God.

After all isn’t Christianity about relationship not rules.

My hope Coram Deo is that as we walk through these ten words you will see not bondage but freedom.

Now we know from living in the world that rules are necessary for relationship.

We get this instinctively.

Also let me just say that of course we want to fight against legalism, the idea that we are saved by our works.

But if our fight against legalism let’t not lose sight that we are called to live lives of freedom, which means lives of holiness.

Jesus says in John 14:15

John 14:15 (ESV)

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Before we go on there is absolutely tension.

Then tension between faith and works.

The pitfalls of legalism and license.

Many times from this pulpit you have heard me proclaim the beauty of God’s grace and that we are saved by the finished work of Jesus not our doing.

This tension point is work working through because it leads us to freedom.

The biblical definition of freedom is not “doing whatever you want.”

Freedom is enjoying the benefits of doing what we should.

We too often think of the Ten Commandments as constraining us—

as if God’s ways will keep us in servitude and from realizing our dreams and reaching our potential.

We forget that God means to give us abundant life and true freedom (John 8:32).

1 John 5:3 (ESV)

For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.

His laws 1 John tells us, are not burdensome.

You think it’s burdensome to have Ten Commandments?

Do you know how many laws there are in the United States?

It’s a trick question, because no one knows!

There are twenty thousand laws on the books regulating gun ownership alone.

In 2010 an estimated forty thousand new laws were added at various levels throughout the country.

In 2008 a House committee asked the Congressional Research Service to calculate the number of criminal offenses in federal law.

They responded, five years later, that they lacked the manpower and resources to answer such a question.

God is not trying to crush us with red tape and regulations.

The Ten Commandments are not prison bars, but traffic laws.

Maybe there are some anarchists out there who think, “The world would be a better place without any traffic laws.”

A few of us drive as if that were so!

People stop and go.

People slow down when driving by schools.

They stop for school buses.

You wouldn’t be able to drive your car to the grocery store without laws.

When you drive on a switchback on a mountain pass, do you curse the guardrails that keep you from plunging to an untimely death?

No, someone put them there at great expense, and for our good, that we may travel about freely and safely.

The Ten Commandments are not instructions on how to get out of Egypt.

They are rules for a free people to stay free.

Something to keep at the forefront of our mind as we read through these ten words, God delivered his people first then gave the law.

The law comes after gospel—after the good news of deliverance.

God did not come to the people as slaves and say, “I have Ten Commandments. I want you to get these right.

I’m going to come back in five years, and if you’ve gotten your life cleaned up, I’ll set you free from Egypt.”

That’s how some people view Christianity: God has rules, and if I follow the rules, God will love me and save me.

That’s not what happened in the story of the exodus.

The Israelites were an oppressed people, and God said, “I hear your cry.

I will save you because I love you.

And when you are saved, free, and forgiven, I’m going to give you a new way to live.”

We need to hear it again:

Salvation is not the reward for obedience; salvation is the reason for obedience.

Jesus does not say, “If you obey my commandments, I will love you.”

Instead, he first washes the feet of the disciples and then says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

All of our doing is only because of what he has first done for us.

With this in mind we come to the first word.

No other God.

Our Bid Idea this morning.

Big Idea: We are to worship God with undivided allegiance.

We are going to break down each of these commandments, these ten words in the same way

- What does this command reveal about God?

- What does this command reveal about us?

- How does it point us to Jesus?

- How does it show us the path of life? I. What Does This Command Reveal About God?

Let’s look at our passage again

Exodus 20:1–3 (ESV)

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 slavery.

“You shall have no other gods before me.

We will see what God is like from the ten words.

And today we see the exclusivity of God.

There can be no rival gods vying for our attention.

The word before means over and against.

God is saying no one else is like him worthy of our attention and praise.

We see from these that God is the redeemer, the deliverer.

Israel had been bound in slavery in Egypt.

God sent his servant Moses to go and demand the freedom of His people.

This command is given in the shadow of the ten plagues.

The ten plagues were so much more then just an intense pressure cooker for Pharaoh to take God seriously

Each was a symbolic defeat of an Egyptian deity.

Osiris, whose bloodstream was believed to be the Nile, bleeds out before his worshipers when Yahweh turns the Nile to blood.

In reverence to Heqet, the frog-goddess of birth, Egyptians regarded frogs as sacred and not to be killed.

Yahweh slays them by the thousands.

Egyptian gods governing fertility, crops, live- stock, and health are all shown to be impotent before the mighty outstretched arm of Israel’s God.

In the ninth plague of darkness, Yahweh demonstrates his rule over the sun god Ra, whom Pharaoh was believed to embody.

And in the final plague, the death of the firstborn, God shows himself supreme over the entire Egyptian pantheon by demonstrating his power over life and death.

One God toppling all rivals.

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt.

The message to the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai is clear:

before you can obey me as the God of the Ten Words of life, you must revere me as the God of the ten plagues of death.

The response required is obvious, too.

If the God who toppled all rivals in Egypt has brought you out of Egypt by his mighty outstretched arm, the only logical response is to obey the first word:

“You shall have no other gods before me.”

Remember your costly deliverance. Pledge allegiance to me alone.

The first commandment is found on what the Lord did for the Israelites in Egypt.

He saved them.

He rescued them.

He delivered them.

He has a claim over them.

When God says, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Ex. 20:2), he is reminding them of the staff, the plagues, and the Red Sea.

He’s saying to them, “Why would you trust any other so-called god?

Why would you trust yourself ?

You didn’t escape Egypt by your own ingenuity or because of Pharaoh’s great kindness.

I put you on eagles’ wings. I defeated mighty Egypt. You can trust me.

This is a word showing us that there is no other God.

There is nothing greater that God could give us then himself.

If you have ever been to a Theology on Tap you have heard me tell the story of Martin Luther.

As the reformation spread and people were beginning to hear the gospel for the first time they would celebrate with a feast.

Luther would hold his glass high giving a toast saying, “Good Creature!”

This meal, these little creatures were meant to stir us to a good creator.

The problem is we often position the created over and above the creator.

Let’s see second

II. What Does This Command Reveal About Us?

Isaiah 45:5a (ESV)

I am the Lord, and there is no other,

besides me there is no God;

Why should Israel worship no other gods before God? Because there are no other gods.

For Israel they would have to unseat this idea that there were multiple Gods.

They were forsaking polytheism to monotheism.

One God alone.

This is how it had been from creation, but they forget it pretty quickly.

If you are reading along with us in our bible reading plan then you recently saw the cautionary tale of divided worship among the children of God.

It seems that between his exile in Paddan Aram and his return to Bethel, Jacob and his family had picked up a few household idol stowaways in their saddlebags.

Though God has not explicitly commanded it, Jacob knows the idols must go:

Genesis 35:2–3 (ESV)

So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.”

The presence of idols among Jacob’s family points to the operation of a “both-and” mentality:

yes, we will serve Yahweh, but also, just in case, we will offer devotion to these other gods, as well.

Dual allegiance. Can you relate?

I have found both Jen Wilkin and Kevin Deyoung invaluable in preparing for this series.

Jen has this to say regarding Jacob’s family having dual allegiances

This mentality hides in the baggage of believers today just as it did in Jacob’s family three thousand years ago. It’s an age-old expression of what James 1:8 refers to as double-mindedness. Double-mindedness occurs not because we replace God with an idol, but because we add an idol to our monotheon so that it becomes a polytheon. The repeated refrain on idolatry throughout Israel’s history will not be that she ceases worship of God entirely, but that she ceases worship of God alone. _Jen Wilkin

What does this mean?

It means that functionally we live as polytheists.

We have a both-and arrangement.

I need God and I need a spouse.

I need God and I need good health.

I need God and I need obedient children.

I need God and I need a well padded bank account.

We think oh I totally love Jesus and we think that because we at least offer some worship to the Lord everything will be ok.

But this command reveals this is not ok.

Jesus says in Matthew 6:24

Matthew 6:24 (ESV)

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

We may think that a half-hearted effort is fine and that all is well but Jesus shows us this dual allegiance isn’t even possible.

We are created for single-minded allegiance.

We are designed for it.

We are made in the image of one God, to bear the image of one God.

We cannot conform to both the image of God and the image of an idol.

pause

Unfortunately it often takes a crisis to point out our folly.

There is nothing like a financial crisis to teach us our worship of money and comfort in addition to God.

There is nothing like a wayward child or a divorce to teach us our worship of having a perfect family in addition to God.

There is nothing like the aging process to teach us our worship of health and beauty in addition to God.

It is at just such a crisis point that we find Jacob ready to expel the household idols.

Penitent, he has just come face-to-face with his own failures.

His daughter had been violated, and his sons had responded with terrible vengeance when he himself failed to seek justice.

Jacob is a man broken of his self-reliance and soured on his own cunning.

He is a man familiar with crisis.

He is a man at last learning to pledge allegiance to God alone.

Whatever instability may be needed to bring us to repentance, the final solution to our practice of polytheism is found in Jacob’s story:

“So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem” (Gen. 35:4 NIV).

Again hear Jen Wilkin, “Jacob could have destroyed the idols in any way. He might have burned them, thrown them in a lake, or hacked them to bits. Instead, he buries them under a landmark tree known as a place of idol worship. Determined to put the past behind him and live in the truth that God is his only hope, Jacob symbolically holds a funeral for the idols in the very place they were typically worshiped. With pointed irony, the place for idol worship symbolically becomes a burial ground for it. Do not miss the moral of the story: to rid ourselves of our idols, we must put them to death.” _Jen Wilkin

The story is told of Handley Page, a pioneer in aviation, who once landed in an isolated area during his travels.

Unknown to him, a rat got aboard the plane there.

On the next leg of the flight, Page heard the sickening sound of gnawing.

Suspecting it was a rodent, his heart began to pound as he visualized the serious damage that could be done to the fragile mechanisms that controlled his plane

he thought of the difficulty of repairs with the lack of skilled labor and materials in the area.

What could he do?

He remembered hearing that a rat cannot survive at high altitudes, so he pulled back on the stick.

The airplane climbed higher and higher until Page found it difficult to breathe.

He listened intently and finally sighed with relief.

The gnawing had stopped.

When he arrived at his destination, he found the rat lying dead behind the cockpit!

Oftentimes we are plagued by sin that gnaws at our life simply because we are cruising at the altitude of indifference.

To see sin and idolatry defeated in our lives requires that we move up—away from the world—to a higher level where the things of this world cannot survive.

Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.

How profoundly this command reveals a heart in us that is indeed prone to wander.

Let’s see third

III. How Does It Point Us To Jesus?

Jesus made it clear in the Sermon on the Mount the scope of the commandments go beyond our actions and search out the thoughts and intentions of our hearts.

Each commandment identifies a particular sin, but behind that sin lie many others.

The Ten Commandments search out the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  

Each commandment speaks to a whole category of sins, and a proper understanding of the law will lead you to say, ‘I am a sinner who needs a Savior.’

We can think of this first commandment, in relationship to Christ, as a tale of two mountains.

God came down on Mount Sinai, saying, “Worship me alone.”

Then, millennia later, he came down on the Mount of Transfiguration and said, “This is my beloved Son . . . ; listen to him” (Matt. 17:5).

It’s amazing that the God who said, “Worship me, and listen to my rules,” now tells us to listen to his Son.

On the other side of the incarnation, the first commandment means giving to Christ the worship he deserves.

He is the “one mediator between God and men.”

He is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.”

He is the one before whom everyone will bow in worship.

As Jesus himself says, “If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him” (John 14:7).

In other words, Jesus has the audacity to say, “If you know me, you know God. If you follow me, love me, and worship me, you worship God. When you see me, you have seen God in the flesh.”

The implication from all this is that if you don’t know God in Christ, then you don’t really know God.

The first commandment can no longer be properly obeyed unless we worship the one who alone shows us the one true God.

It isn’t enough to use the word God or to belong to a monotheistic religion.

We are not worshiping the one true God unless we are worshiping the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

On March 23, 1743, when Handel’s “The Messiah” was first performed in London, the king was present in the great audience.

As the Hallelujah Chorus washed over the crowd everyone was so deeply moved by echoing words, “For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth,” the whole audience, including the king sprang to its feet, and remained standing through the entire chorus.

From that time to this it has always been the custom to stand during the chorus whenever it is performed. With spontaneous joy the soul stands to salute Him who “comes in the name of the Lord.”

He is “King of kings, and Lord of lords” and to Him we pledge allegiance.

The coming of Christ has changed everything.

So we have seen how this command shows us God, reveals our divided heart, brings us to the feet of Jesus and so let’s ask finally

IV. How Does It Show Us The Path To Life?

When Exodus 20:3 says, “No other gods before me,” it could mean “none other but me,” or it could mean “no other gods before my face.”

Calvin understood the commandment in the latter sense. He said that the sin here is “like a shameless woman who brings in an adulterer before her husband’s very eyes, only to vex his mind the more.” _John Calvin Marriage is a good analogy for the first commandment.

You cannot have a both/and relationship with your spouse—at least, not for very long.

Suppose a husband came home and said, “Honey, it’s good to see you!

I want to introduce someone who’s very special to me. Don’t get me wrong—you’re also very special to me.

But I’ve met someone else.

She’s lovely, and I’m going to spend some time with her, but also a lot of time with you!

I just want to let you know that some nights, I’m going to be with her instead.

I think you two will get along just fine.

You’ll be great friends. You both mean so much to me.”

What should a wife say in this situation?

“That’s great, dear, I’m honored that I can still be a part of your life.”

Hardly! The wife would say, “It’s me or her! Make up your mind.”

And if the wife were to say that with a great deal of passion, would anyone think she was being cruel, proud, unfair, or intolerant?

No, we would say that she’s being just the sort of wife she ought to be.

She has every right to be jealous.

We’d be concerned if she wasn’t angry.

Some relationships are meant to be either/or, not both/and.

Marriage is a relationship that demands forsaking all others.

And so it is with God.

Love is at the very heart of the first commandment.

If we truly love God, we will love no one else and nothing else like we love God.

That’s why the Shema was so foundational for the Israelites:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4–5).

Love suggests affection, but it is also a decision.

The Shema called God’s people to choose the Lord as God, and him alone.

We choose God because he first chose us.

And now, forsaking all others, we commit ourselves to him unreservedly.

There can be no and in our relationship with God.

We love and worship him above all others because he alone is God.

Jesus died for us….that means God in love has perused you.

When all else fails he wont.

He alone is worthy of your praise.

Jesus said that he brings freedom and abundant life.

Are you living in the abundance of Christ?

A key indicator for when we are in violation of this command is when we are not excited for God.

When we have an apathetic heart.

When attending church or reading the bible is mechanical or routine.

We can know we are walking the path of life when we can say I am more excited for God today then I have ever been in my life.

This is a place where we can examine our hearts.

Conclusion

We live in the tension of a broken world friends.

When we read of the New City that is to come it stirs us

The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. . . . And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. (Rev. 21:18–19, 23)

It’s this amazing description of a beautiful place that feels opulent.

But John’s description of the New Jerusalem is meant to tell us something more.

It takes the things we esteem the highest in this life and reduces them to the level of commonplace.

All of these elements—gold, precious stones, the stars, rulers, crowns—these are what humans throughout history have worshiped, the stuff of our dual allegiances.

These are the idols of this world.

The New Jerusalem is a first-is-last place, where the things we have exalted will be cast down to the level of their real worth:

as mere metal and stone, as mere human authority, as mere created lights that move at the command of their Creator.

It is a place where precious metals and stones are trodden under foot as common road dust, where our crowning personal honors are cast at God’s feet,

where the people and objects and institutions to which we have ascribed our worship will fall from their lofty places.

It is a place whose inhabitants at last obey the first word: “You shall have no other gods before me.”

Jesus, who kept the first word in every way, taught his followers to pray that God’s kingdom might come “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).

Again hear Jen Wilkin, “Why wait until the next life to count as worthless what God counts as worthless? Why wait until the next life to esteem what God esteems? The first word invites us into the blessed reality of no other gods now. It is our undiluted worship that marks us as his children in a crooked and depraved generation. Today is the day for toppling our idols of power, wealth, se- curity, and comfort. Now is the time for treading in the dust the gods of our sinful desires. To live this life unbound to the things of earth is to anticipate the indescribable joy of an eternity in which every earthly pleasure bows to the pleasure of being finally and fully in the presence of the one and only God. Choose this day whom you will serve. Pledge your allegiance.” _Jen Wilkin

Worship him with undivided allegiance Coram Deo.

Application Questions.

1. What idol am I most tempted to worship alongside God? What am I hoping to control or avoid by this dual allegiance?

2. Who is it that I count on, who do I truly trust? Sure, God works through means, such as doctors, insurance companies, and prescription medicine, but when I really am in need, who do I know that will always come through?

3. Am I excited for the Lord? Do I have a zeal for the things of God?