No Other God

Tonight, I’m excited to start this new series on the Ten Commandments. I think you are going to find that it is different than a lot of the series that we have done in the past. First off it is one of the first series that I think we have ever done on a Wednesday night that does not take us through an entire book of the Bible. The only other series I can think of where we did not do that was the Beatitudes which was a little over 2 years ago. I thought about it the other day but if you have been with us since the winter of 2020, you have gotten a lot of Scripture in a relatively short period of time. We’ve gone through Genesis, Joshua, Esther, Jonah, John, Acts, Philippians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and 1 Peter. In less than 4 years, we have gone through 10 books of the Bible and we have gone deep in those books. I’ll stand by this, by being hear you are getting more of God’s Word than I would say 85% of youth ministries in the country. The second thing that is different about this series is that we will be looking at numerically less verses than we did with Esther or even the book of Acts. So, why do I think we need to spend the next 2 and a half months looking at the Ten Commandments? First I think it involves the people that are around you. YC is changing, we’re getting younger and I believe we are also growing in numbers. I think that the Lord is about do do something with this group that we have not seen in a while and with that in mind, I think that it is important to ground you in what must be front and center for your life. What you worship and how you worship are of utmost importance. In these 10 commandments, we are confronted with what is most important in our lives: We must love God and we must love our neighbor. We must serve God and we must serve our neighbors. In these 10 commandments, we are confronted with what every man from the time of Adam has failed to do. We have 10 short laws, 10 words, 10 commands that take up about 15 verses that totally change the way we live and who we are. These 10 commandments are as relevant for your life today and for the rest of your life as they were when they were passed down to Moses. If you want to know what is wrong with the world, it is because we have failed to uphold these 10 commands. We should not be surprised that the world is not better off in the 21st century because we have never been able to successfully do these 10 things. Your entire life relates to these 10 commands. You cannot escape them, you cannot go live off in some remote castle somewhere and be removed from them, we are really confronted with these commandments every day of our lives. We need to live these 10 commandments out in our lives. We need the world to be confronted with these 10 commandments but even more so, we need to confront them with the God who brought these commandments forth. What we are going to see over these next few weeks is that these commandments are a Law but they are not a law that is void of Gospel. There is good news in these 10 laws and what we are going to see is how Jesus lives these 10 laws out. J.I. Packer said that Jesus Himself is the living embodiment of the Ten Commandments and that living below the standard of service that His life set is simply falling short in what we are to do with our lives. As we go through these commands, we’ll see how Jesus relates to them and even how He expounded them in His own day. Let’s open up in prayer and then we will read Deuteronomy 5:1-10

Deuteronomy 5:1–10 ESV

And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, “Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Not with our fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today. The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, while I stood between the Lord and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the Lord. For you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up into the mountain. He said: “ ‘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. “ ‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

The First Commandment

What I want us to do tonight is sort of work backwards. I know that we read verses 1-5 and that serves sort of as a prelude to the commandments but I want to save those verses for last because I want you to see just how much Christ relates to those verses. Let’s dive right into the first commandment in verse 7: “You shall have no other gods before me.” The first commandment confronts us with this question: Who are we to worship? Who is deserving of all praise, honor, and glory? God does not leave any room for any other. Our worship must be centered on God and God alone. Notice in verse 6 that the Lord says, “I Am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” What the Lord says to the people of Israel is this: I am God over all things. I am the creator of all things. Who I am is who I have always been and always will be. It was I that brought you out of Egypt, it was I who brought you out of slavery and bondage, it was I who did what you were unable to do, it was I and no other god that did this. God does not leave us any room to guess who or what god we are to serve. He says I AM the Lord, Yahweh, your God. There is no question of whom man is to serve. Yahweh, the Lord God Almighty is the one that we must worship. That name, Yahweh, I AM, tells you so much of what you need to know about God. John Piper lists ten things that I will run through quickly. 1. God has no beginning. 2. God has no end. 3. God is absolute reality. This means that there is no reality before Him and there is no reality after Him. All that exists is by His sovereign will. 4. God is utterly independent. 5. All that is not God depends totally on God for its existence. 6. All the universe in comparison to God is nothing. 7. God is constant. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. 8. God is the absolute standard of truth, goodness, and beauty. 9. God does whatever he pleases and it is always right and always beautiful and always in accord with truth. 10. God is the most important and most valuable reality and person in the universe. What other god is like this? There is none other! But man is constantly making new gods to serve. Mankind has a worship problem. The problem is not that there is no worship, the problem is that there is far too much false worship. Mankind is drawn to worship but it worships the wrong thing. We worship false gods, we worship ourselves, we worship money, sex, power, basically we worship all but the One True God! You see if man were able to get this first commandment right, we would not have needed the other 9 because our hearts would be set on perfection. D.L. Moody said, “If men were true to this commandment, obedience to the remaining nine would follow naturally. It is because they are unsound in this that they break the others.” Understand that these commandments are universal commandments for each individual person. We must look at these commandments and see how they must first impact and change our lives before we start thinking how they could change our neighbors lives. If these commandments do not rock you to your very core, we should hardly attempt to rock the cores of others. These commands are universal because they are for every man, woman, and child to have ever walked the earth. These commands are personal because you yourself make up one of those people. These commands do not say, “They shall have no other gods before me” they say, “YOU shall have no other gods before me.” In your life, you are going to serve someone. You are going to be under someone or something. There is no escaping it. Everyone is a worshipper but not everyone worships the God that deserves worship. What you need to do is look at your life and you need to ask the question: Who am I going to serve? Who is going to be the center of my affections? Who or what is it that is on the throne of my heart? If you say the God of Scripture and the God of the universe, you must understand that God is not here to only have part of you. It is God alone and not God AND that you must worship. God is not here to accept part of your heart and there is not room in your heart for two thrones. You may say that you are worshipping the God of Scripture but are you truly worshipping Him with your whole heart? I mentioned this during YC Week but I can’t even begin to tell you how many students I have had in my life have come up to me wondering whether they were saved or not. They usually say something like, “When I was 7 I prayed a prayer or raised my hand in church so does that make me a Christian?” It depends on how you have lived from then to this point. Have you lived a life that is pleasing to the Lord? Have you desired to have your ways and actions conform to Him? Look if all you did was say a prayer at 7 years old and then went on living like the world and sinning so much that even the Devil is shocked, you were not saved at 7. Why? Because there needs to be evidence of regeneration! There should be signs of the new birth! If I were to invite you into a home and say, “check out my new car” It would make no sense if there was no car to show off! You’d think I was insane if I brought you to an empty garage and said, “Do you like the car?” But that is what so many teenagers do! They say, “I’m a Christian! I’m a Christian!” but there is absolutely no evidence of salvation and repentance ever taking place! I do not want to know what prayer you prayed as a child, I don’t want to know what Veggietales you watched, I don’t want to know if you raised your hand at an invitation, I don’t want to know how long you’ve been in church, I want to know what God you are serving now! And I don’t want to just know about it, I want to see it! I want to see the evidence of a new life in Jesus Christ happening inside of you! You see it is one thing to PROFESS Christ but it is another thing entirely to POSSES Christ. You can profess Christ as Savior all the day long and not be possessed by Christ. Simply professing Christ does not save you unless Christ first possesses you. Even the demons profess Christ, just look at what the demon says in Mark 1:24 “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.”” That’s profession. He knows who Jesus is but that does not save him. Why not? Because He is not possessed by Christ and he serves a different master. Who is your God? Who do you serve? Who is your master? Know this too, God tells us this so that we may glorify Him and be with Him forever. Any other god that you serve, anything else that you worship will lead you to Hell. God says, “You shall have no other gods before me because there is no other god before me. I am the One that can save, I am the One that will redeem, I am the One that is there.” The commands that God gives to us are given not that we may have joy taken away but so that we can have true joy that will last. So, the first commandment tells us whom we must worship. The second commandment tells us how we must worship.

The Second Commandment

Let’s read Deuteronomy 5:8–10 again: “‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” We could spend a lot of time talking about this commandment but I want to bring your attention to the act of worship. When it comes to what the people of God do, how we worship is as important as who we worship and I say this because if we look at this command and we look at the rest of Scripture, it is clear that God has a way that He desires and commands to be worshipped. We know that God is spirit, He has no physical body and the second commandment reminds us that we are not to create images that are to represent God. The reason that this is so important is because it is so easy for us to have misplaced affections. It is easy for us to not make the main thing the main thing. We are not to have misplaced worship. Jesus says in John 4:24 “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” One could argue that if you don’t care about how God wants to be worshipped, you don’t care about the God you claim to worship. This second commandment goes beyond just making a carved image, it goes to the way that we glorify God. Do we do it in the songs we play? Do the songs we sing give glory to God? Do we do it in the prayers we offer? Do we do it in the respect that we show Him in our time of worship? There needs to be a reverence with how we approach the Lord. We are not coming to worship a piece of wood or a picture or a created being, we come to worship The God of all Creation. The God who is called a consuming fire and a jealous God. The people of Israel recognized as they stood at Mount Sinai that they were before the presence of someone unlike them. They recognized who they were and they recognized who God is. Perhaps even more importantly, the second commandment reminds us that in order to worship God as He commands, we need to worship Him in love and with a pure heart. Remember what Jesus says in Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” A.W. Pink said, “The words at the close of the second commandment, “showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments,” make it crystal clear that the only obedience which God accepts is that which proceeds from an affectionate heart.” Our worship is more than just fearful obedience. We worship God because we have seen that He is altogether lovely. All that is good, all that is perfect, all that is worth worshipping is found in Him. What we also see at the end of the second commandment is that love for God and obeying God are never at odds with each other. We cannot love God if we don’t obey Him and in order to obey God with a pure heart and good intentions, we must love Him. In the New Testament, we see this in pretty much all of John’s writings. Jesus says in John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Then later in 1 John 5:1-3

1 John 5:1–3 (ESV)

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.

Here we see love and obedience to God linked. James Montgomery Boice said that our love to God is expressed through our obedience to His commands. If God commands us to worship Him in a certain way, there should be no question as to how we should worship Him. It’s His way or it isn’t true worship. To worship God in any other way than what He says is like telling your girlfriend how much you liked your ex. You might use the right words and might say nice things but that is not showing love to your significant other. So, we need to worship the true God and we need to worship Him in spirit and in truth. We don’t have time to talk about styles of worship and I’ll be honest, I don’t think style necessarily matters when it comes to worship, what matters is substance. I have a certain theology when it comes to picking out songs that we play on any given night or during any given service. I’ll gladly tell you why I pick the songs that I pick and why I don’t play the songs that I don’t play. Really it comes down to theology and I want to sing to the Lord good songs. Not songs that necessarily just sound good but songs that are good theology and songs that don’t support heresy bad teaching. This is why I don’t play Elevation Worship or Bethel or even Hillsong. I don’t like the teaching and I believe that much of what they say and produce while it may sound good does not come from a proper understanding of Scripture. With the few minutes we have left though, I want us to go back to Deuteronomy 5:1-5.

Jesus and Deuteronomy 5:1-5

What happens in Deuteronomy 5:1-5 is actually a rehash of what happens in Exodus 19-20. In Exodus 20 we see the first appearance of the Ten Commandments and Deuteronomy 5 is Moses sharing those commandments with the next generation of Israel. On that day when the Israelites stood at Mount Sinai to receive the Law of God, it was a day unlike anything that they had witnessed. It was a day where the people were to consecrate themselves for two days because the Lord would come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. Limits were to be set around the base of the mountain so that nothing human or animal could touch the base of the mountain. On that third day, there was thunder, lightning , and a thick cloud accompanied by a very loud trumpet blast that caused the entire people to tremble and as the people looked to the mountain, the Lord descended on it in fire. The trumpet grew louder and louder and as Moses spoke, God answered him in the thunder. There was so much fear in the hearts of the Israelites that they begged Moses to speak to God on their behalf because they could not stand before the presence of God. How does Jesus connect to what we have read tonight? We read of Mount Sinai but there is a second mountain that we have to talk about. At Mount Sinai we are given the Law. At Mount Sinai we see the old covenant. At Mount Sinai there is fear, there is condemnation, there is death because at Mount Sinai, anything that touched the mountain was to be put to death but we as Christians don’t belong to that mountain. As Christians, we are partakers in the new covenant. The author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 12:22-24

Hebrews 12:22–24 (ESV)

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

Jesus is the greater Moses. It is Jesus that does not just stand between us and God, it is Jesus that restores us to God. It is because Jesus kept the Law perfectly that He is able to stand as our mediator and Great High Priest. Jesus does not just declare the Word He is the Word. It is through Christ that we are able to come upon a mountain not with fear and death but with joy and life. It is because of what Jesus did that we can call God our Father. 1 John 4:16–18 says, “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” At Mount Sinai there is fear but at Mount Zion, the Heavenly Mountain, there is confidence, boldness, and perfect love. Now you might be thinking, “Hold on, if Jesus fulfills the Law perfectly and the Ten Commandments are part of those Law and I am totally unable to live a perfectly life on my own but Christ does it for me, what importance do the Ten Commandments still have for my life? And do I even still need to follow them?” Kevin DeYoung answers like this: “By Jewish tradition, there are 613 laws in the Pentateuch. They all matter, because they all teach us something about love for God and neighbor. But the 613 can be summarized by the Ten Commandments, which can in turn be summarized by two: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. To be sure, Jesus certainly transforms the Ten Commandments, but he never meant to abolish them.” Why do we follow the Ten Commandments? Because they bring us closer to God and they bring us closer to our neighbor. We follow them because we follow God. We do them because our Savior did them. They are good because they point us to Him that is best and if God has commanded us to do something, we don’t need any another reason to follow. As you go about your week this week, reflect on who it is you worship and how it is that you worship Him. Let’s pray.