God And...

Exodus 20:3 NIV

“You shall have no other gods before me.

Today launches a new series. Before I get too far in, I should give credit to the right sources. I will be referencing a few ideas and terms in this series that come from Jamie Smith’s book, You Are What You Love. And I am calling the title to this series All-Day-Worship. Let me lay down the basic idea that this whole series will build upon. We are created by God to worship. As such, we are always worshipping. So then, we need to get rid of a few false ideas right here from the start. I have two of these worship myths that ought to get out on the table right now.

The first worship myth: that I only worship while I am in church. When I bring up the idea of worship and then we start thinking about what worship, our first inclination is to think about this right here, what we do for an hour every Sunday morning in this place. That’s not a bad inclination; in fact, I would say is the correct place to begin when we think about worship. We should always anchor our worship of God in the regular pattern of the gathered community of Christians in the church. But here is where the myth comes in; often we then go on to think that what we do here in church for an hour every Sunday is somehow a comprehensive and complete list of all the worship that I do in a week.

So then, we list off the different pieces that make up worship. And that list includes things like singing hymns and songs of praise, praying together, giving our gifts to God, reading the Bible, and hearing a sermon which proclaims and reminds us of the gospel message which shapes our lives. And then we sort of automatically assume that once we leave the church sanctuary on Sunday morning, that somehow our activity of worshipping hits pause until we come back and gather with fellow Christians to do those same activities again. The assumption is that whatever it is you go and do during the six days that you are not here is NOT worship. But that is a myth because God created us for worship. We are worshipping beings, and our capacity at worship does not stop when we leave this place. We are made to worship.

Made to Worship

Westminster Confession - “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever”

The Westminster Confession is a historical statement of Christian faith that begins with this very idea—the idea that we are made to worship. The first question asks, “What is the chief end of man?” In other words, what is our purpose? Why are we here? Why did God make us? And the answer according to the Westminster Confession, man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. God made us hardwired to glorify him. Our souls are preprogramed to naturally give glory to the one who created us. Every human being who is born has a built-in predisposition to worship. It is what we are programed to do.

Let’s take a few moments then and consider what is going on behind all of these little habits and rituals we come and repeat here every week in this room as we gather for worship. What is it that makes singing and praying and preaching actions of worship?

adoration - awe, wonder, amazement, admiration

Perhaps this is not a comprehensive list, but consider a few of the big motivators happening in worship. Worship is about adoration. We come here and sings songs of praise because we adore Jesus; these are actions that give adoration to God. Adoration is an activity which provides an outward expression to inward convictions of admiration, awe, wonder, amazement. This is why so many of our hymns and praise songs speak of the wonders and mighty actions of our God; it is part of the adoration we give to God as an act of worship. And this is why so many of the Psalms in the Old Testament list and name the actions of God which he has performed on behalf of his people. These are the actions of God that prompt a response of adoration from his people. Adoration is one component of worship.

veneration - reverence, respect, submission, dependence

Veneration is another component of worship. Venerable actions are ways in which we express reverence and respect. It is the way in which we recognize that God is in a position of authority and we are people placed under that authority. This is an act of worship which affirms that we are people who live in submission to God’s will; that God is the one who is in control; that we are people who are dependent upon God to provide for our needs. We often reflect these expressions of veneration in our prayers of worship.

identification - connection, relationship, community, belonging

Here is another component of worship that we’ll highlight: Identification. Worship provides an identity for us—the worshippers—by expressing the relationship connection we have to God—the one we worship. Or to look at it from another angle, worship expresses the ways in which we have community and a place to belong. Worship reminds us of our identity as broken sinners who have been redeemed by the grace of God through the cross of Jesus. We express this identification in worship by many words: forgiven, redeemed, restored, loved. Worship doesn’t just express the identity of who God is, it also reminds us about who we are. We hear God’s word revealed to us in scripture and we learn to understand the meaning of the gospel’s impact upon who we are and how we are supposed to live in response to God’s grace. These are all actions of worship which express our identification as people of God.

Alright, like I said, this is not a complete and comprehensive list. But let’s just work with that for today. Worship and the things we do in worship provide expressions of adoration, veneration, and identification. Those are, at least, some of the expressions going on in and through the outward actions of worship.

But now follow along with me. Expressions of adoration, veneration, and identification are not confined to just the few handfuls of activities that we do here in this room for one hour a week on a Sunday morning. There are countless ways in which we can express adoration, veneration, and identification. We can find countless outward expressions for the sense of awe and wonder and amazement and admiration we have for God. We are people who show and express admiration in some way or another every day of our lives. And there are other ways in which we express veneration beyond what takes place right here. We are people who acknowledge our submission to the authority of God in many ways. And there are countless activities in our lives for the ways in which we express our dependence on the one who provides for our future and our security. And we are all people who need to belong—to have and to know a sense of belonging. We all seek out expressions of identity about who we are as people of God; we express that identification every day in our actions.

You see, we never stop worshipping. God created us to worship and glorify him. We are made to worship. And worship does not end or pause when you leave this room and go about our Monday-through-Friday lives. Worship goes with us because it is programed into us.

Commanded to Worship

This brings us to the few words from scripture that we will be looking at today. In Exodus 20 we find a list of rules known as the Ten Commandments. Along with Psalm 23, the Ten Commandments are probably the best known passage of the Old Testament. These words are not unfamiliar, even to people who do not have a connection with the church. And the few words of the Ten Commandments we are looking at today is the very first of those Ten Commandments. You shall have no other gods before me.

You shall have no other gods before me

This comes as the very first commandment, perhaps, because God knows very well that he made us to worship him and that we are human beings who have all been hardwired from creation with the inclination to always be worshipping. We are always drawn to ways of expressing adoration, we are always engaging in actions of veneration, we are always searching for expressions of identification. And ever since sin came into the world, God knew that all humankind would continue to be drawn to these expressions of worship in ways that focus in directions other than God.

God knows that we are people who are always worshipping. And God knows that if we are not worshipping the LORD as our God, then we are worshipping something else as our god. The first commandment is not based on the premise that if you worship, then you must worship God. the first commandment in based on the premise that when you worship, then you must worship God.

Hebrew ahl = before, beside, along, with

Let’s pick apart one particular word in this commandment: the word before. You shall have no other gods before me. It comes from the Hebrew word ahl and signifies a preposition of relation. It is not always translated into English as “before” because it can mean many of our English prepositions of relation: before, beside, along, with. You see, there is no assumption in this passage that the Israelites receiving this law from God knew or believed anything about the existence of only one true God. We know from other parts of scripture that there is no other god except for the LORD. But these Israelite slaves who had just been rescued from Egyptian slavery and been brought to this mountain to hear the law of the LORD did not know this.

people worship many “gods”

instead of the LORD

In fact, the Israelite slaves in Egypt were brought up in the Egyptian culture to believe that the Pharaoh was a god. The entire episode of the ten plagues in Egypt were meant to show to the Israelites and the Egyptians and the world that the LORD was stronger than the gods of Egypt. The Israelites were traveling to the land of Canaan in which there were many gods. And they didn’t get very far till they created their own idol of a golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai.

So, you see, the first commandment is not an issue of worshipping God or not worshipping anything at all. Since we are made to worship and are always worshipping something, the first commandment is an instruction to make sure that our worship is always pointed in the right direction. Because if we are not worshipping God, then we are worshipping something else.

alongside of the LORD

And so often in the Old Testament, the Israelites broke this commandment not be completely throwing out the LORD, but by adding other gods alongside of the LORD. They did not tear down the temple or destroy the ark of the covenant. They did not abolish the Levite priests. But they added worship to many other gods alongside of worship to the LORD. You see, in their minds it wasn’t that they were completely rejecting the LORD. They were not atheists in the sense that they denied the LORD existed or was even real. They knew the LORD was a real God. But they were guilty of directing their worship to other things alongside of worshipping the LORD.

Now then, we are not people who make idols today like the people of the ancient near east did back in the time of Old Testament Israel – bowing to statues of golden calves and things like that. But make no mistake, we live in a world in which we have many other gods out there competing for our worship. And these other gods compete for our worship in ways that are not always in place of the LORD, but rather alongside of the LORD.

This commandment of worship, then, is an instruction that does not simply check the box by showing up here for church on Sunday. The instruction of the first commandment is one in which we are forced to take close look at the kind of worship we express during the six days outside of this place. And these are not actions of worship that necessarily show up as hymns and prayers.

what in my life competes for expressions of adoration, veneration, identification?

What is it, then, that competes in our world for expressions of adoration? Where are those other areas of life in this world that receive our expressions of veneration? What else in this world draws us into an expression of identity about who we are and to whom we belong? These are all expressions of worship that every person on the planet puts forth to different gods of our choosing every day. We give these expressions of worship to the LORD here in this place for this hour. But are there expressions of worship going to other gods alongside of the LORD in the days when we are not here? This is why God begins the Ten Commandments with the instruction: You shall have no other gods before me.

Free to Worship

trying to spread around expressions of worship to so many places is exhausting

What are we going to take away from this today? The ancient near eastern people of the Old Testament ran themselves ragged trying to make sure that they were worshipping all the gods. Their adoration and their veneration and their identification was spread so thin over so many areas. It must have been exhausting to always be running around dividing all of their expressions of worship in so many directions. After all, if we are worshipping beings and we are always worshipping and there are so many things in this world that compete for our expressions of worship, then we better make sure we get them all in. I would hate to overlook or leave out any one of these other gods.

I only need to focus my worship in one place: the LORD

But in this sense, the first commandment brings freedom. You don’t need to run your life bonkers trying to express adoration and veneration and identification to all these other areas of life in this world that compete for our worship. We are free to worship the LORD alone as our one and only true God. It is only the LORD who is the focus of our lives of worship.

with the LORD as our God, there is nothing lacking

And why is this such a great thing? It is because the LORD provides for us, his people, all that we need to find expressions of adoration and veneration and identification. With the LORD as our God, there is nothing lacking. With the LORD, we find the one and only perfect fulfilment of our chief end to glorify God and enjoy him forever. You don’t need to add anything else to that. There are no missing pieces left undone. God alone is our life, he alone is our salvation, he is our cornerstone. And we are now free to live a life that can enjoy worship and glory to our creator and redeemer who alone is worthy of all our worship.

God alone is our life, our salvation

God alone is worthy of ALL our worship