No Other Gods
Notes
Transcript
We have spent a lot of time talking over the past couple years about the world in which we live and how so many of us feel by looking at what is going on around us the end is near. We see events like the war between Ukraine and Russia, when I wrote this sermon, my next sentence was, the continued unrest in the middle east, the protest and unrest in our country and we think, man this is it, this is exactly what is going to happen before Jesus returns, this is the signs of the end time Jesus was talking about when he told us to be on guard.
The truth is most of this is caused by a much deeper crisis going on in the world, it is a character crisis in our individual hearts that have spurned most of these conflicts today. From the day in the garden when Adam and Eve disobeyed Gods commands and decided they didn’t want to have to rely on God, but wanted that power for themselves and sin entered into the world we have lived in conflict with God and the people around us. So from that event, the beauty life he intended for us to live, this life where we lived in this covenant relationship with him and relied on him for all of our needs has been destroyed. And there was this life he wanted us to live based on God’s character and his promises.
Noah was promised by God that he would not be destroyed if he obeyed and ultimately it was his descendants that repopulated the world.
Abraham was promised to be the father of a great nation of his descendants and that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him. These descendants would be God’s people and the blessings and promises would run through them.
But we read and see that these promises didn’t mean their lives would be easy and we see them being taken into captivity in Egypt and it is through a leader named Moses that they are miraculous delivered from the hands of Egypt. It was shortly after leading his people from Egypt that God met with Moses and gave them new instructions on how to live life in covenant with Him again. It was his words that were instructions on how to live life the way he designed it for us to have life in the way it was meant to be. These instructions were not just instructions on how to live life in relation to Himself, but to those around us it was a way in which we were to live life with him and His people to have the life we were designed from the beginning to have.
This morning we are going to begin a whole new series, where we look at those words of God to Moses on Mt. Sinai, what we commonly refer to as the Ten Commandments. In Hebrew they were referred to as the decalogue which literally means ten words. These words weren’t just restrictive guidelines on how we are supposed to do things but these were the ways in which we are to live so we could have real life. When we think of the Ten Commandments we typically think of them as prohibitive in nature because our translations mark 8 of them as “Thou shall not” or for those newer translations, “You Shall not” and only two are what we would consider positive in nature telling us You shall remember, and to Honor your mother and father. As we read them this way it is hard to not think about them the way we thought about our parents rules as a teenager.
I remember as a teenager and as a child there were times I really hated the rules my parents gave me. Some of them seemed so dumb and useless and I was always wondering why there were so many rules why my parents couldn’t just trust me and not give me stupid rules. I was sure they just wanted to ruin my life and make me miserable. However, now that I am older and have kids of my own I realize my parents weren’t trying to make me miserable or make my life difficult. Instead they were trying to protect me and keep me safe and wanted the best for me.
When we think about them as prohibitive one commentator said it isn’t even prohibitive, it is much more stronger language than that, in the Hebrew and the life of the Israelite there was no other way in which we were to live.
I know I can hear some people now, they are saying why do I care about the Ten Commandments, why are these words important all of that is old covenant law and has nothing to do with us. Jesus came and did away with the law I don’t have to worry about any of those rules anymore I am living under the law of grace. However, we are missing the point when we start to think about the law or the commandments in this way. In fact, it was Jesus himself who said he didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.
Matthew 5:17
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
Coming to the Earth was never about ending or abolishing the law, Jesus fulfilled it, he fulfilled it in his life and death and we could spend an hour talking just about that, but we won’t do that here this morning.
So this morning, let us pick up the first of the ten words in the first three verses of Exodus 20.
Exodus 20:1-2
1 And God spoke all these words, saying,
2 “I am the Lord your God…
The very first word here is God giving his intimate name, the Tetragrammaton, his literal name and it is important to note there is deep significance to the people of God when using this name. This is not a name you would walk up and say to the God of the Universe the creator of all things, there was a time in our countries history when we respected offices even when we didn’t respect the person. A good example would be you’d never walk up to the president and call him Donald, you would always call him Mr. President. Of course, we live in a different time now and that respect has kind of dwindled away, but its the same idea. In fact for Jewish people they never wanted to make the mistake and say the name when they were reading the word and would say the word you see translated here, Adonai, the Lord, just to keep respect on the name of God. This is so important because God is trying to initiate this intimate relationship with his people by using his name. It is why he follows his name up with your God, its him trying to have this deep intimate conversation with his people. He wants them to know he is not just the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he is not just the God of the things of the past but he is the God of the now and the future.
I just want you to take a moment to pause here and hear that for yourself this morning. God is not just the God of the past, he is not just the God who has done things in the past in other peoples lives that we read about in the Word of God, but he is OUR God. He is still with us, he is still working, he is the God of our past, our present, and our future. He has not changed, he will not change, he will always be the same and you can take heart knowing those truths.
Lets get the rest of that verse 2 Exodus 20:2
2 “… who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
And this word here for brought you out is a military word, while it does mean out of slavery, it also has these connotations of taking an army out to war. It is important he wants them remembering who he is and what he has done he is trying to remind them of the covenant he has with them by reminding them who he is.
Next we see the first what some would call prohibitives in the ten words
3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
And this is a legitimate translation of the Hebrew, but there is no actual Hebrew word for to have. Instead the Hebrew word here is הָיָה and it means “to be” and so a more literal translation would probably read “Other gods shall not be to you” No matter how you render that translation, the idea here is that for Israel there is not, there can never be any God besides YHWH.
And these three verses will setup the entirety of what is to follow in this decalogue, it is causing them to reflect upon this covenant between man and God. He is saying remember who I am, remember all that I have done and don’t place anyone else before me but put me first above all else.
And this same truth invades our life today, we are to put God above everything else in our life, he is to be our number one just look back to what we looked at first thing this morning. What we should see is this is the same thing Jesus was telling his people when he walked the earth.
There was a time Jesus was teaching and the sadducees had devised a plan to trap Jesus by making him answer a question about what happens in the resurrection. Jesus gives them an answer they definitely weren’t expecting and while the Sadducees are arguing amongst themselves a scribe comes to ask Jesus a question about the commandments and we will pick up the story in Mark 28
Mark 12:28-31
28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?”
29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
And Jesus pretty true to his nature when asked questions never follows the guidelines he has been given, here he is asked for the most important commandment, and instead he gives them 2.
Jesus here is quoting the Shema in verse 29-30 which Jews would repeat upon waking every single morning. It is called the Shema because the first word Hear is the Hebrew word Shema. So each morning they would pray this Shema as a way to honor God. This completely encapsulates the entirety of the first 4 commandments. Then Jesus follows it up with verse 31 and tells us we should love our neighbors as ourselves which completely wraps up the last 6 commandments.
And we hear these words and we think, Adam this is so easy, I have been a monotheist and only loved God ever since I have given my life to Jesus all those years ago. Yet truthfully, most of us have been polytheist for years, and if we are really wanting to get truthful its not even that we believe in separate Gods, because as good Christians we know we can’t do that, but instead of having separate Gods what we like to do is add things to Jesus.
All I need is Jesus and this job. All I need is Jesus and a spouse. All I need is Jesus and a bigger bank account. All I need is Jesus and a thinner waist. Its not that we have a entirely separate God we believe in or worship by itself, but we have put goal posts on our lives that must include certain things for our lives to be of merit or value. There are so many other things we have in this culture we can easily put on a pedestal as equal importance to God for our happiness.
One of the things we must hold on to and I think this scripture is pointing us to is we cannot have any other Gods before him because he is the best thing this world has to offer us. Friends we don’t have to look very far to know that having the money, having the small waist, having the bigger bank account, or having the spouse is not the answer to our problems, and often times even when we obtain it we still don’t fill fulfilled.
I am reminded of the words of Jim Carey when he said, “I wish everyone could get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they could see its not the answer.” And you know why its not the answer? Because it wasn’t the way we were supposed to live, none of those things were supposed to hold the key to our happiness and fulfillment. That spot was reserved for God and he gave us that directive in the first of these ten words.
So church the question is, what other God have you put before him? Chances are it is not going to be some other literal God like Allah, or something else, but for us it is going to be some material thing we have placed above him. It may be your job, your status, or for a lot of us even our children or spouse, but know this, if we want the true fullness of life God created us for we can never have that unless we put nothing before Him. There is no other way to live than with him as the top priority. Are you ready to put him in that place? Are you ready to put him above all else?
