God Alone
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Reading: Deuteronomy 5:6-7
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.
Pray
Blaise Pascal was a mathematician, philosopher, and theologian. Apparently he had too much spare time on his hands!
The Harvard Classics 48: Blaise Pascal: Thoughts, Letters, and Minor Works Section II: The Misery of Man without God
It is natural for the mind to believe, and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.
Pascal talks about all the many things that people try to bring happiness, but how all of our efforts fail. He concludes “the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself. He only is our true good, and since we have forsaken Him, it is a strange thing that there is nothing in nature which has not been serviceable in taking His place; the stars, the heavens, earth, the elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, pestilence, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since man has lost the true good, everything can appear equally good to him, even his own destruction, though so opposed to God, to reason, and to the whole course of nature.” (Pensees, No. 425)
Pascal recognized a fundamental truth about humanity: we must have something outside of ourselves that gives us meaning. We need a purpose, and it must be connected to some objective being that neither derives from nor depends on us. The only being that can fulfill our greatest need, what Pascal called “the abyss” within us, is God. Without God, people will desperately try to fill that need with anything and everything.
So God begins his ethical instruction with himself:
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.
We talked about verse 6 last week, so we’ll focus on verse 7. But one quick observation: you don’t get to verse 7 without verse 6 first. We must come to recognize God before we can elevate him to his rightful place. Once we know who God is and what he has done, only then can he make the difference in how we live. And that difference begins with a command to exclusive covenant loyalty. Look at it again, and read it slower this time. Let the words sink in:
7 “ ‘You shall have no other gods before me.
Now I believe that this command is more than just a command not to worship other gods. This command has some things to teach us about the True God, and places on our shoulders a burden to live in light of what it reveals.
What Does the First Commandment Teach Us about God?
What Does the First Commandment Teach Us about God?
God Is Peculiar
God Is Peculiar
The Scripture is replete with declarations of God’s uniqueness.
9 remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me,
2 “There is none holy like the Lord: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God.
Even pagan kings declare God’s uniqueness:
29 Therefore I make a decree: Any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way.”
It’s not just that we shouldn’t have other gods - this commandment shows us that there ARE no other gods! There is no other being which can be classified in the same category as God. He is totally different from every created thing. We are dependent, but he is not. We are changing, but he is not. We are in constant need, but he is not. God is peculiar - he is qualitatively different. There can be no other gods before him (literally, “to his face”) because there are no other gods to come before him.
God Is Preeminent
God Is Preeminent
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
That idea of God being “one” is full of meaning. It means, for one thing, that he is alone. Only God is God. It also means that he is not just the only one, but he is number one: he is first. God is preeminent in his existence: by his eternal nature, God pre-dates his creation.
2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
He is also preeminent in his importance: he is the one upon whom all things depend.
10 In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.
28 for “ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
The first commandment brings us face-to-face with a God who matters. This isn’t a god you can brush off or ignore, or a god who only rarely commands our attention. He is preeminent, and we must constantly treat him as such.
God Is Possessive
God Is Possessive
This one might seem harder to catch from this commandment, but notice the way in which God states his requirement:
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.
Do you heart the possessive nature of God coming out? He is possessive of his people - I am…YOUR God; [I] brought YOU out…YOU shall have no other gods before ME. And this isn’t the only time God’s passion for his people comes out in Scripture - God uses the phrase “my people” over 160 times! Many of them are similar to Jeremiah 31.33:
33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
God is also possessive of his glory:
10 “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”
11 For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.
What you’re probably realizing is that so much rides on this first commandment. There is a depth to this commandment that these few words give us. They show us the very nature of God, and knowing who God is ought to change the way we behave - especially toward him! So the second question comes to the fore:
What Does the First Commandment Require of Us?
What Does the First Commandment Require of Us?
We Must Love God Alone
We Must Love God Alone
In biblical terms, love is a short-hand for the idea of covenant loyalty. When a suzerain and a vassal would make a treaty, the first obligation of the vassal was that of exclusive covenant loyalty - they were forbidden from having covenant with anyone else. Their sole object of loyalty in covenant was with the suzerain. God demands that our love - our covenant loyalty - rest solely in him.
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
We cannot love God with only half of a heart, or half of our soul, or half of our wit, or half of our effort. Half-baked Christianity is sin - it’s a direct contradiction to the first commandment. We must love God with every fiber of our being, every breath in our lungs, every ounce of our effort, every beat of our heart. We cannot have a heart divided between two loves. Nothing - not our way of life, or our occupation, or our hobbies, or our obsessions, or our pet sins, or our sources of pride, or anything else can receive our love - we must be exclusively devoted to God and God alone!
But what about loving our neighbors? Does not Jesus command us to love them too? Yes, but we cannot love them without loving God, and true love for God extends to our neighbors, especially those closest neighbors of family. But our exclusive covenant loyalty must be to God alone.
We Must Worship God Alone
We Must Worship God Alone
The first commandment also effects our worship. If God is unique - peculiar among the gods that men worship, and if he is the one who is preeminent, that means in part that our worship cannot belong to any god other than the True God. We must not worship anything other than God himself.
When Moses talks to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 8, he reminds them of God’s actions throughout the wilderness wanderings. He has given them manna, something no one had even heard of before. He has provided clothing that did not wear out, and given them direct divine guidance for their journey. He brought water out of rocks, letting them hunger and thirst so that they would learn to trust him.
But there was a danger ahead in this land of promise. Once they got there, they were in danger of forgetting God. Moses warns them:
17 Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’
18 You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.
19 And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.
20 Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.
Whoa - no mincing words here. This is perhaps the most prevalent danger for us. Many of us are comfortable. We have good jobs (or are retired), we have enough to get by. We have the blessings of God in so many different ways. And yet we forget him. Rather than be grateful and ever-more reliant on him, we forget he even exists, or has provided the blessings we enjoy. We think we did it!
That’s breaking the first commandment. Any time we allow ourselves to cease giving God the worship he deserves, we turn to false gods. Maybe we don’t worship Asherah or Moloch, or Baal or Chemosh. Maybe we don’t burn our children in fires to false deities - or slaughter them in the womb as today’s cultists do. But we have our own false gods - we give our worship to hundreds of TV channels, or college football teams. We bow before the gods of comfort and ease. We prostrate at the idols of “being kind” and voting for a political party. Our hearts are perpetual idol factories, and our good fortunes crank those assembly lines into high gear. No matter what substitute we give our worship, we break the first commandment. Only God deserves our worship.
We Must Serve God Alone
We Must Serve God Alone
Closely connected to the idea of worship is that of service. We are also to serve God alone.
12 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,
13 and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good?
20 You shall fear the Lord your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear.
21 He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen.
Jesus was talking about money, but it works for any God-substitute:
24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
Just as there is no substitute for our worship, there is no substitute for our service. God demands not only our loyalty, but our allegiance too. In fact, numerous Scriptures connect the idea of service with worship. What you worship, as someone once put it, is what you become. Whatever you give your adoration you will also give your attention, and will therefore begin to look like it. Serving God makes us more like Christ. We seek to demonstrate our love and adoration for God by obeying his commands. We do what he says - we serve the Lord with gladness. We live out Paul’s admonition:
23 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,
24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.
