NO OTHER GODS

NO OTHER GODS Exodus 20:3-7 September 28, 2008 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction Preliminary comments . . . A little boy was riding his tricycle furiously around the block, over and over again. A policeman finally stopped and asked him why. He said, “I’m running away from home.” The policeman said, “Why do you keep going around the block? “ The boy’s answer was, “Because my mom said I’m not allowed to cross the street.” You know, commandments from the voice of authority just seem to stick. Maybe that’s one reason the ten commandments from God simply cannot be improved on as the bedrock basis of all morality! Maybe the fact that these fundamental expectations come from the God of the universe, and they have a way of getting into our hearts and finding agreement in us who are, after all, made in His image! In one of his recent books, Christian author and broadcaster Pat Robertson writes of an interesting experience he had: Several years ago I was in Rajamundry, India, to speak at a conference and shoot a television documentary. Early one morning my camera crew and I went to the side of the river that flowed through the city of Rajahmundry. The native people believed that the river contained the sperm of the god Shiva, so they came early in the morning to dip themselves in what they considered to be a supernatural elixir. All around the steps leading down to the river were statues of their gods and goddesses. The ominous statue of Shiva, the god who is believed to destroy and then rebuild, was set apart from the other idols. Shiva was portrayed sitting cross-legged, staring into space. Two cobras were wrapped around his neck, turned toward each side of his face, supposedly giving him wisdom. Around the patio leading to the river I observed Indian men and women bowing with their faces on the ground before stone statues of various gods, begging them for answers to their prayers. I thought, “Don’t these people realize that these lifeless hunks of rock can’t help them?” Yet there they were, offering sacrifices and prayers to that which had no ears and could not speak. Our text this morning is Exodus 20:3-6 – You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to thousands who love me and keep my commandments. At first blush, it looks like this commandment is the easiest one of all to keep. After all, we don’t live in India, the far east or the African or South American jungles! We don’t have little carved images of stone and wood in our homes that we bow down to every night. I mean, this one we can handle, right? It’s the ones about not lying, and not committing adultery, and not lusting after what my neighbor has. Those are the hard ones. Those are the ones that I need help with. This one I can handle. Here is a truth I would like for you to consider right up front: “My obedience to God is determined by my image of God”. Because we are gathered here in the Spirit of God and encountering God’s Word, presumably for the purpose of getting to know Him better and living for Him more righteously, I want to ask you to intentionally invite the Holy Spirit to challenge your view of God this morning. I want you to ask yourself, “Is the God that I worship the God that is presented in the Bible, or have I reshaped God to be a god of my own making?” We are prone to do just that, because the gods we fashion for ourselves are a lot more lenient, and a lot more likely to give us the easy stuff to obey. Why does God demand exclusive worship? This morning I’d like to spend a little time talking about why God demands our exclusive worship. But I’d like to speak to this issue of God’s jealousy. Did you catch that in the text? Verse 5 says, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God…” What is with that? Is God insecure? Is He like a guy whose steady girl is being lured by some other guy? Like a boss one of whose favorite employees is getting offers from other companies and he’s agitated over it? No. God is not insecure; He’s God, and He knows what we know, only He knows it infinitely better—namely, that He deserves all glory. A few pages over in Exodus, the 34th chapter, is where God says again, “the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” But that is in the same context as these words: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished…” [webmasters note: Exodus 34:14; Exodus 34:6] What does that say about God’s jealousy? He’s jealous that the right thing happens—He gets the rightful glory. But He’s green-eyed jealous about something else. He does not want His beloved people drawn away by deceptive idols. He knows that behind those pretend gods are the forces of darkness whose intent is to destroy you. Those false gods will draw you in, then chew you up and spit you out. His jealousy is not the jealousy of insecurity; it is the jealousy of a lover who desires not only a pure and lasting relationship, but also the good of His beloved. That loving jealousy drives our holy God to be what Deuteronomy 4 says: “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. False gods who are no gods mean no good for His people. This poor mentally disabled woman in East St. Louis who was discovered recently to have been beaten and abused for three years by her two male cousins while they kept her trapped in her home was nearly killed in grossly inhuman fashion by people who were supposed to love her. Beaten with metal poles and brooms, whipped repeatedly with extension cords. Her untended wounds were so bad that her leg had to be amputated. Those who should have protected and helped this needy woman with jealous love, destroyed her ruthlessly. God knows the end result of those who are mistreated by the devil masquerading as false gods wants to do to His beloved people. So He is jealously protective and justly angry when they are exploited by Satan. That’s why God is jealous for you. He knows that those who love and serve the only true God are the ones who are healthy and happy and benevolently cared for. July 1976, Israeli commandos raided a hijacked plain at the airport in Entebbe, Uganda. In less than 15 minutes all 7 of the kidnappers had been killed. The 103 Jewish hostages had been set free. However, 3 hostages were killed. Commandos came in and shouted, in Hebrew, “Get down! Crawl!” Most of them understood and obeyed, but some, for whatever reason, hesitated and were shot by the men trying to free them. You know, when someone loves you enough to die for you, it is the height of foolishness to ignore there stern warnings, and it is the height of wisdom to believe and obey the one who loves you. Parents, don’t we all wish our children could see past childish naivet?and somehow know that we put rules in place for their good and not just to restrict them and make them upset? So with kind and stern insistence He warns us to not give in to the appeal of any other so-called god. But He specifically commands His people not to make any kind of image, even in an attempt to symbolize Him. He says it is dangerous and wrong. The making of images is not an out-and-out pursuit of other gods. That was dealt with in verse 3. Verses 4-6 are dealing with the otherwise innocent attempt of the people to have an image that could remind them of God, give them a direction, a target for their worship. God says, “Don’t do that.” Those images you never intended to be your god will become your god. While we in our day don’t normally carve out statues to venerate, we are still prone to try to tame God into a mental image—a resemblance of what we think He is like. From Santa Claus to some other grandfatherly personage, from a good old boy to a Scrooge-like character, everyone has a “picture” of what god looks like to them in mind. Those are all idols and spiritually deadly attempts to reduce God to something imaginable at best and manageable at worst. But every time those images will distort the true person of God and get you all confused. God insists: don’t do that! In what way are these idols so inferior and so insidious? After all, it does seem rather innocent to pray toward a statue, to hold on to an amulet or good luck charm and let them remind you that Jehovah is your God. What’s the harm in using crosses and crucifixes, anyway. There’s a humorous story about a little boy who wanted a new bicycle and told his mom. She said, “Why don’t you pray about it?” He decided to write a letter to Jesus. “Dear Jesus, I want a new bicycle and I’ve been perfect for the last year.” He knew that wasn’t right so he threw that piece of paper away. He wrote, “Dear Jesus, I’ve been a good boy most of the time.” He knew that was wrong so he started again, “Dear Jesus, I want to be a good boy.” He knew that wasn’t right either, so he threw that away too. He went into the living room of their Catholic home, grabbed the statue of Mary, wrapped it in a towel and hid it under his bed. Then he wet back to writing. “If you ever want to see your mother again…” God forbids all attempts to fashion in our hand, in our heart or in our mind any kind of image of Him, because such images cannot CONTAIN Him Images cannot contain God Any image, ancient and tangible, or more modern and imagined, is inadequate to truly represent the majesty and holiness of God. God tells us they’re all idols and He detests their use. Even though it may be a simple mental representation of a spiritual being and meant to help the worshipper focus on God, it is condemned by the very God we’re trying to imagine! But this thing that I want to look at with my eye or with my mind’s eye is only intended to focus attention on God! But, you see, the command prohibits precisely any effort to create our own image of God. Isaiah, the prophet of God, asked: (Isa 40:18) To whom, then, will you compare God? What image will you compare him to? You see, Verse 3 covered the idols we’re used to identifying. And we’re big kids—we know that an idol can be a golden calf or a an image of Baal, but that it can also be any one of a pantheon of the more modern replacements that vie for our worship: materialism (god of “stuff”), hedonism (the god of pleasure), egocentrism (the god of me), and isolationism (only me). But here it is any idea fixed in the mind of what God is like that goes beyond scripture. He’s bigger than our little brains can figure. You see, the devil is far trickier than trying to get us to pray to a stone image, or to drool with envy over the car in our neighbor's driveway or on the showroom floor, or secretly fantasizing about sex with a non-spouse or a glossy image in print or pixels. We know all that and still fall. But what about the more camouflaged images of God that bamboozle us? How about doctrine? When the only source of true revelation is the Word, and the Word is not decisively clear on an issue, so I grab onto some teacher’s interpretation, cling tenaciously and insist that I’m smarter than the other guy. There are many variations on this theme. I read four verses about God’s mercy, so now I know He could never send anyone to Hell. In fact, I’m pretty sure there probably isn’t a hell! Lot’s of current literature tells me that when people die they see a light, feel a lot better about things, then they become angels. I like that, I think I’ll hold onto that idea. I read in the Bible that God allowed divorce in certain cases through Moses because of the people’s hardness of heart; and lots of Christians are getting divorced—hey, must be okay. Idols are not just metal, they’re also mental. They’re not only wooden, they’re also wishful thinking about God. Sinful man is always trying to cram God into a sanctuary, but He told us He doesn’t fit in them. Sinful man tries to cram Him into their systematic theologies, but He doesn’t fit. And He certainly doesn’t fit into our fantasies about what we’d LIKE Him to be! Why are these ideas idols? Because they wrongly try to get God figured out. But the living God is bigger than our human ideas, and He is also bigger than His revealed Word! I didn’t say He’s different from the truth revealed in the Bible—it is after all His self-revelation. But the greatest of Bible scholars do not, and never will, have God all figured out. He’s enormous in His wonder, and it seems He’d rather stop trying to get Him completely figured out, and just get lost in His wonder! Images cannot contain Him! Images cannot explain Him The Israelites tried to reduce Him to a golden calf. But that calf quickly became for them a snare and a false god. Do you know why we like calves? Because you can get a little calf to go anywhere you want him to go. And that’s what we want in a god. I’ve dealt with many people, and you have to, who’ve started their theologies with these words, “But, I think God is…” We don’t want to get our “but” out of the way! Listen, what we have is the sure Word of God in the scriptures. And there’s plenty there about God that we can all still learn—and we should. But we’re not going to figure God completely out! Our imaginations, brains and fantasies will never be able to replicate, demonstrate, explicate, duplicate, illustrate or elucidate God. All our idolatrous personal doctrines deceive us, distract us, disappoint us, dominate us and then destroy us. God will not fit into your leash or your corral. Our best images cannot explain Him. But I have good news for all us pea-brained, humanoid imbeciles. You see, God never did want you to figure Him out completely—all He wanted you to know about Himself He recorded in the Bible for you. But He did have a surprise. He knew all along that He was going to satisfy our curiosity about what He is like. At just the right time, He sent His Son. In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last day he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. [webmasters note: Hebrews 1:1-3] Colossians 1 says He is the image of the invisible God! You want an image? Here He is—Jesus! And Colossians 3 says in Him, in Christ, all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form. Jesus Himself told His hard-headed, hard-hearted disciples, Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. [webmasters note: John 14:9] He is the living Word! A lot of people cling to their idolatrous notions because, for whatever reasons, they don’t like the God that Jesus reveals to us. Every time man sins, it starts with an idol. Every time a person comes to reconciliation and peace with God, it starts with Jesus. One last thought: Even with the awesome revelation that Jesus, the living Word, has brought to mankind, we still don’t know everything about God, but the Bible says that one day, because of Jesus, those who trust in Him will know fully, even as they are fully known. All those who have come to Him and received from Him salvation from their sins will one day stand face to face with Him, and they’ll see Him as He is, and (hold on to your seats) 1 John 3:2 says in that moment, we shall be like Him. Until that day, don’t be an idolater. Don’t trust your human thoughts or your highest hopes about God. Just trust Him that He’s given you enough information about Himself through the Word and Jesus the living Word to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him. Prayer for the departing Brazil mission team.   [Back to Top]