The First Commandment

Q 51: Which is the first commandment?

A 51: The first commandment is, “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.”

Q 52: What is required in the first commandment?

A 52: The first commandment requires us to know and acknowledge God to be the only true God, and our God, and to worship and glorify Him accordingly

Q 53: What is forbidden in the first commandment?

A 53: The first commandment forbids the denying, or not worshipping and glorifying the true God, as God and our God; and the giving that worship and flory to any other, which is due unto Him alone.

Q54: What are we especially taught by these words, “before me,” in the first commandment?

A 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 God

Main Proposition:

Statement of Doctrine or Application

What we are going to do today is first off show from a 20k foot overview God’s incredible and perfect providence that led the Jews to this moment, but also we are going to point to Christ’s fulfillment of the Mosaic Covenant.

Intro:

Statement of proposition

What I love about scripture is that we can take it forward and backward and it is perfect. Everything that we talk about there is evidence and proof that supports our claims. We can see prophecies and covenants that are fulfilled in a way that is impossible for any of us to accomplish

We can see parallels that can only be described as miraculous and points us to the Trinity.

For today I want us to first off look at the Parallels between Exodus and Matthew:

What do we know about the Book of Matthew? It was written for the Jews and we can see that based on the context:

Jesus’ genealogy

Matthew doesn’t explain the ceremonial washings

The heritage and history of the Jewish people

The emphasis of the kingdom

The fact that Matthew quotes or alludes to the Old Testament 65x in his book.

So naturally we are going to be able to breakdown the Mosaic Covenant and Christ’s fulfillment of it in great detail

There are 6 parallels in Exodus and Matthew and each one is going to show us God’s perfect plan

Exodus: Matthew:

1. The King of Egypt wants to kill the deliverer 1. The king of Israel wants to kill the deliverer

2. Moses returns to Egypt (Exodus 1:8-22) 2. Jesus Returns to Israel (Matthew 2)

3. Moses/Israel are called out of Egypt (Exodus 2) 3. Jesus is called out of Egypt (Matthew 2:15)

4. Moses/Israel part through the Red Sea (Exodus 14) 4. Jesus is baptized (Matthew 3:15-17)

5. Moses/Israel spend 40 years in the wilderness 5. Jesus is tempted for 40 days in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11)

6. God gives the law through Moses (Exodus 20) 6. The Law is expounded and fulfilled through Jesus (Matthew 5:17-48)

Why does this matter?

Leading up to God giving the Jews his commandments we see the impossibility of their journey

When we take a look of this entire picture how amazing is God’s plan for us?

There is no way that anyone could have predicted this for the Jewish people or thought of the Laws of Mosaic Covenant and even the fulfillment of it.

God demands exclusively loyalty.

As the one true God he cannot nor should he tolerate the worship of “any other gods”

Main Point #1: God’s perfect providence played out

Statement

God brought Israel out of slavery in a way that points directly to Him and his divine nature.

It wasn’t man or something by chance that led them out of Egypt, leading them in the wilderness for 40 years or having food falling from the sky. It was GOD.

In this section we are going to talk about God’s providence to salvation.

Prove

We see this in the Book of Deuteronomy:

Deuteronomy 5:4–7 ESV

4 The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, 5 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: 6 “ ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 7 “ ‘You shall have no other gods before me.

As we have read the parallels between the two events we see that as God delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt, so he has brought the New Testament Christian out of bondage to sin and death.

This was God’s a step towards redemption for not just the people of Israel, but for all spiritual seed of Abraham.

The main theme of the Bible is: Redemption (Fulfillment of the Covenant of Grace)

The context of Deuteronomy indicates how believer’s should understand the push or propel of the first commandment.

When Moses wrote the book of Deuteronomy he wrote it in a way of motivation to the Jews, urging Israel to have faithful obedience to the covenant laws given 40 years prior at Sinai.

This is essentially a sermon from Moses to the Jewish audience to not repeat the errors that have been made in the past in the promised land.

In Deuteronomy 5:4 we see that God has communicated to humanity.

Back in the beginning of human history, God communicated clearly to Adam and continued to communicate his will and intentions for all of humanity.

God has truly revealed himself in these scriptures.

But all of these doctrines that we read NEED to be received and believed.

There is a huge difference between someone that knows God and someone that believes in in Him?

I want you to ask yourself, “Do you know of God or do you believe in God?

The implication for the Jews of this time is that he has saved them from slavery, and he has communicated himself to them, they must in turn hold on to him.

As we read this what do you think the tone is from Moses?

There is a seriousness, heaviness, to this teaching.

In the same sense God has done the exact same thing for Christians, it follows that they must also obey the Lord. Having professed Christ, believers cannot turn their backs on him.

We have been bought by Christ’s precious blood, and therefore delivered from the house of bondage because of this we MUST totally surrender ourselves to him.

Moses it telling these people:

LOOK at what God did for us. Look at the journey from slavery to where we are now.

The same goes for us Christians today. Look at the journey that we have gone. It’s different and each of our journeys to Christ is different, but each one of us who is truly in Christ has the same base of their journey.

Illustrations:

Moses/Israel: Christians:

1. Slaves 1. Slaves to Sin/World

2. “In the wilderness” 2. “Lost” in the world

3. Kept his promise to Moses/Israel 3. Keeps the promise of the New Covenant

Apply or Confront:

None of us know what God’s providence looks like, we can’t predict it, guess it, will it into existence, but having that true saving faith in God, in His Son then we know that no matter what the outcome is God will be glorified to the utmost amount.

BUT God has saved each and every one of His elect out of disgusting, dirty sin and he commands that now you shall only worship and honor Him.

I don’t think that is too much to ask for do you?

Look at it this way: Who in here has gone into one of those caves that is totally dark? Like you can’t see your hand in front of your face dark?

You are walking and walking in that cave and you don’t know how to get out of the dark by yourselves do you? So what do you do?

At that point you are totally obeying and following every word that your guide says in order to get out. Once you do its like this sense of relief “ this deep breath” that is similar to this. As lost sheep we do not know how to get to the light. We must completely surrender ourselves to God, we must follow God out of that darkness and into the light.

Main Point #2:The instructions that we receive from the First Commandment:

Statement

Now I want us to at what does God expect out of his people/believers?

Prove

2 Positive Instructions:

1. God wants us to know Him

We must enter into a solemn covenant with Him

Trust in God with all our might

Fear: We are to fear God just like a child’s relationship with a good parent

2. Worship God and glorify Him accordingly

Formal Sunday Worship yes…BUT

Here the commandment is reflected in our human nature

Men and women has bodies, minds, and emotions, and God wants to be worshipped with the whole person

Minds: We worship with our minds at least in part by thinking about, meditating on, and remembering all that God is and has done

Emotions: Love is an emotion, we are to desire him, rejoice and delight in God and we must highly esteem and honor God

Actions: We are to be zealous and show enthusiasm towards him, We are to give Him praise and thanks, walk humbly with Him

Micah 6:8 ESV

8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Romans 1:24–25 ESV

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

It’s pretty easy to see what happens when we decide to worship ourselves over God

There are no different paths to worshipping God. There is one path. One way.

What about the harder instructions that we get with the first commandment:

1. We must not neglect anything that is due to God:

We cannot skip church just because it’s an inconvenient (stayed up too late, there’s a game on I wanna watch, etc.)

This commandment means that we must not skip church when it is inconvenient to us

When it comes to church we cannot say that we are too physically tired to come to church

When we give up going to church we are saying that our self-love overtakes our love for God

2. We cannot praise ourselves for any good thing:

When something works out well for us, we should thank God, not praise ourselves. This doesn’t mean that we should not work hard, we should use all of our abilities in our work, but we have to be careful because when we start to praise ourselves we can come close to the sin of idolatry when we praise ourselves instead of humbly acknowledging God

There is so much temptation in life to praise one’s self especially when we come up with a good idea, business plans that make a lot of money, getting accepted into a certain college, passing certain tests, exams etc. We must praise God.

The demands of this first commandment make us believers feel uncomfortable or at least it should because the commandments of God are the standard of all righteousness and is the benchmark by which sin is judged.

There is no way that we can perfectly fulfill this commandment or any other commandment.

In this argument too is not just talking about the world, ourselves, but also false religions.

All non-Christian religions are based on false ideas about God. They are not just “different” paths to same God.

There is one path and that is very simple and written in John 10:1-2

John 10:1–2 ESV

1 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. 2 But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

Illustrations

Apply or Confront

I want us to think about this over the next week and think about areas of praising, honoring and worshipping God that I do a good job at and areas that need improvement. NOBODY here is perfect. We all have areas in life where we do not put God in his rightful place in our hearts

I want us to think of areas in our life that we can make improvements and worship God the way that he deserves.

Main Point #3: Are we putting God on the first, second or third tier of our lives?

Statement

For this last part I want us to really think and reflect on our own personal relationship with God.

Where does he stack in our lives?

If there was a pyramid in our lives of things that are important. Where is God:

MAKE and DESCRIBE PYRAMID OF TIERS

Where does God rank in your life. Honestly. Think about it, pray about it. Honestly, ask yourself where God ranks in level of importance in your life.

The difference between the first and second commandment is that in the first commandment we look at the object of worship while in the second commandment we look at the way of worship.

If we worship God without taking any attention or notice to God’s revelation of himself, we are certainly worshipping a product if our own mind and not the true God at all.

Prove

God demands the number one spot in our lives. Not just some of the time, but 24/7 365.

We aren’t even suppose to put ourselves about God

Look at the 12 Apostles:

Did any of them put themselves or their lively hood before God? No

They paid the ultimate human price and that was with their lives

Each one torturously killed in the name of God

Why? because they knew down to their bones what they saw with their own eyes and believed and trusted Jesus Christ.

There is nothing that they would put over that and we can see their sanctification and growth through scriptures. From the beginning of the gospels to the Book of Acts how each of them grew in their faith.

Here when we talk about putting God first in our lives really comes down to each person’s heart.

It is a heart issue, not an intellectual issue

This first commandment is a matter of Lordship.

We are to recognize from the heart that God is Lord above all things and that therefore he will not tolerate an rivals

nor should he have to tolerate any rivals

Illustrations

“KOBE AND MJ”

They put winning above everything: friends, family, well-being of their relationships

People will always say that they are willing to put God ahead of something until it becomes an inconvenience.

Apply or Confront

Going into the next week I want our focus, prayer and reflection on where we are placing God during certain times of our week:

Lets be cognitively aware of where we place God.

Is God ahead of playing video games? playing sports?

Is it all the time or some of the time.

Application:

Pray daily thanking God for releasing you from your former slavery to sin.

Every believer has their own journey with Christ and God, but we all just like the Jews have been saved from slavery of this world

Place God in his proper place in our life

Praying, being obedient to His Word, Laws, Commandments.

Letting our actions, emotions and minds glorify and worship God

We are not saved by works, but because of God’s grace we are to be obedient to Him.

Do we have faith in God’s providence?

As believers we do not know how life will turnout, but because of that faith in Christ and God’s grace we should have the confidence to know that God will not let any of his children fall.

Through good times or bad times.

We do not know what the final outcome is. What God’s ultimate plan is. All we know is that God is sovereign and his plan is perfect.