No God But God 092610
(props lighter, paper, bowl of water).
Series: The Ten Commandments
Ten Commandments M1: Sermon Notes (10 09 26)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: No God But God
Text: Deut. 5:1-10
BIG IDEA: God expresses his love for us through the Ten Commandments, and we express our love for him for him by keeping them.
Other than the 23rd Psalm which begins with the words “The LORD is my shepherd…” the Ten Commandments are probably the most famous passage of Scripture in the entire Hebrew Scriptures, or the Old Testament. Most followers of Jesus Christ would say that the Ten Commandments are important, but how many could we actually recite? (use one minute)
Take out your sermon outline just for a moment and see how many of the Ten Commandments you can actually write down. Did you get 10, or 7, or even 4? I hope you don’t feel too shamed if you couldn’t name many--because most people in the West can’t name the Ten Commandments.
A recent survey of 1200 people, aged 15-35, found that most of those polled could not name more than two of the Ten Commandments, and they weren’t very happy about some of the others when they were told about them! (3rd service Jane Ty (one of our interns) shared with me that when she was in class at Ambrose University (it’s important to know that this is the university of our denomination, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, it’s a school where you have to profess to being a committed Christian to be admitted, a school where many of the students aspire to become pastors or missionaries) so Jane our intern is in a class at Ambrose University when one of the Old Testament professors asked the students, “How many of you here can name all 10 of the Commandments?” at least half could not.)
So if you can’t name all of the Ten Commandments, I hope you don’t feel bad, but I do hope and pray that you would feel motivated during this series to learn them and make them a part of you. Someone has said that human beings have made some 33 million laws, but they still have not been able to improve on the Ten Commandments.
Even though the Ten Commandments are famous, their purpose is frequently misunderstood.
Many religious people believe that the Ten Commandments are the way to gain the acceptance and approval of God. Many people believe that if they keep most of them most of the time, when they die, God will look at their valiant effort to keep the Ten Commandments and will open the door of heaven and invite them in. People who are of a more secular bent are often uncomfortable and turned off by the idea that God, or anyone else, would “impose” a set of rules on them. They view the Ten Commandments, or any other code that would seek to guide human behavior as being like hail, spoiling an otherwise pleasant day in the park.
One of the best ways to keep us from imposing some kind of myth onto the Scripture, and to help us avoid misinterpreting what God intends, is to look at a passage in its original context.
So let’s look at the origins of the Ten Commandments.
Please turn to Deuteronomy 5:1-10:
1 Moses summoned all Israel and said:
Hear, Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today. Learn them and be sure to follow them. 2 The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. 3 It was not with our ancestors [a] that the LORD made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today. 4 The LORD spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain. 5 (At that time I stood between the LORD and you to declare to you the word of the LORD, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain.) And he said:
6 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
7 "You shall have no other gods before [b] me.
8 "You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 9 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 parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 10 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Pray:
(Map) In this message, we will look at the context of the Ten Commandments. We will look at where and why they were given to us and we’ll look at how we can honor God and our design by keeping the first commands to put God first.
I want us to look specifically at verse 6 to get a sense of the context.
6 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
As you read the Old Testament (and hundreds of you have joined our movement to being in the Scriptures at least 15 minutes a day four times a week so you’ll pick up on this if are you new to Scripture as you read the Word) you will see how God delivers his people out of Egypt, out of a land where they have been slaves for some 400 years. He miraculously parts the Red Sea, and under the leadership of his servant Moses leads them out.
In the book of Exodus we see how God saves his people, the Hebrews, from the land of Egypt where they have been slaves. After saving them, he gives them the Ten Commandments. He does not give his people the Ten Commandments in order as way for them earn their deliverance from Egypt. No, he first saves his people from the land of Egypt; and then he gives them the Ten Commandments.
And God does not give us his Ten Commandments so that we can win the approval of God and earn the forgiveness of our sins. No, the Ten Commandments have been given to us to show how we can flourish in a relationship with God who has already accepted us…who has already forgiven us our sins. 2x.
And if you have never turned to God and received the forgiveness of your sins; if you have never, as far as you know, been welcomed into God’s arms, you can turn to him. God became a human being in Jesus Christ, died on a Roman cross, offering himself as a sacrifice to bear your sin and mine, so that we could be restored to a relationship with our Creator. If we turn from our sins, which the Bible calls repentance, and ask God to forgive our sins, and bring us into a relationship with himself, he’ll do that. When you have done that, you become a person positioned to flourish in a relationship with God by living the Ten Commandments.
(transition)
Take a moment to look at verses 2-4 of Deut. 5.
In verse 2 we read: “The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Horeb.” Horeb is simply another name for Mount Sinai.
In verse3 and 4 we read: “It was not with our ancestors [a] that the LORD made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today. The LORD spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain.”
The verse describes how the Ten Commandments were given in the context, according to verse 4, where the LORD spoke in a face to face conversation out of the fire of Mount Sinai. God here reveals his personal name Yahweh and keeps emphasizing I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord your God. So it was a personal and intimate time. And that through this conversation the LORD establishes his covenant relationship with us.
What is a covenant relationship? It is a relationship that is based on a solemn promise. Marriage is a covenant relationship. It is a relationship based on a promise to be faithful and to love our partner, for richer, for poorer, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.
A friendship can also be based on a covenant--as was true of David and Jonathan’s friendship, the friendship between Naomi and Ruth, her mother-in-law. A covenant creates a kind of safety and security in a relationship so that it can flourish. And God enters into a covenant relationship with us so that our relationship with him can flourish—so that it can be deep and intimate.
In Deut. 5:29 we read:
29 Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!
The word “might go well with” means “absolute, complete, flourishing.” How so?
The Ten Commandments are simply ten words in Hebrew. But as the best biblical scholars have affirmed, they are more than just ten words engraved on a stone tablet, they are the verbal expression of the holiness and love of God, and they show us how to relate to God and each other. The first four commandments--You shall have no other gods before me; no idols; don’t use the name of God in vain; observe the Sabbath—show us how to honour God, who is holy and how we love him. The following six speak of honouring our parents, no murder, no adultery, not stealing, not lying, not coveting, show us how we honour and love our neighbour.
The ten words are more than ten engravings on a stone tablet—they express the very character of God. They give us the most fundamental information in the universe—how we relate to our Creator and our fellow human beings. They reflect the very character of the Living God, and because we are made in God’s image, they also reflect our character. The truths are engraved not only on stone, but on the very fabric of our lives. This is part of the reason why while the religions of the world are in so many fundamental different forms (some affirming there is one God… other religions asserting there are countless gods… some no gods at all; some affirming a life after death, others denying this), if you look at the teachings on what it means to live as a human being in the world, they all in some way, mirror the Ten Commandments. Because the Ten Commandments are a reflection of God, and because we are made in God’s image, they are a reflection of us. So even if we have never read them, there is a part of us that knows them because they have been engraved onto the conscience of every human being (as God affirms in Romans 1).
Remember the context of the Ten Commandments. They were given to God’s people after he had saved them from the land of Egypt where they had been slaves, in a context where he was establishing a loving, marriage-like covenant with his people.
When you summon all that is best in you and commit yourself for the rest of your life to a man or a woman in marriage, you bring a baby into your home that you want, you are not going to be relating to that person in a way that will wreck the relationship or wreck their lives. No, you will set up some guidelines that will enable your relationship to deepen and flourish. So it is with God, God whose love far surpasses our own, set up a series of guidelines in his word for us that will enable us to grow and flourish in a relationship with him and with one another. (Paolo’s photo)
If we honor the Ten Commandments, we honour God and our design.
You can sail into the wind, but you can’t sail directly into the wind. You can sail about 45 degrees into the wind, but you can’t sail directly into the wind. If you try to sail directly onto the wind, you’ll find you can’t do it, your sails cannot harness the energy of the wind. If you say to yourself you are just going to toss the rules of sailing and forget the rule of the wind. You are not going to be sailing. There are certain laws in sailing…the laws the laws of the wind that you must honour in order to flourish on the water.
And so it is in life. Our Maker has established certain laws in the universe that reflect the nature of things. Dorothy Sayers says, There is a difference between saying: "If you hold your finger in the fire you will get burned" and saying, "if you whistle at your work I shall beat you, because the noise gets on my nerves". The law against whistling at work is arbitrary and may or may not be enforced, but the law of the fire is reflects the very nature of the way things are. If all of members of parliament and all the members of congress from all the governments of the world were to assemble here in Vancouver and were to pass a law saying “fire no longer burns”—the first member of parliament who put his hand in fire would soon recognize that law of the fire is very far from the law against the law against whistling at work. He would discover that you never really break the law of the fire you just break yourself over it.
And so it is with the Ten Commandments, because they reflect our nature. We don’t really break them; we just break ourselves over them. Conversely, if we honour God, we also honour ourselves because they reflect our design. The Ten Commandments were not given to ruin our lives, but they are an expression of God’s love for us, of his desire for us to flourish.
Can you imagine how different world would be if we kept then Ten Commandments. Our world would be an entirely different place. But despite all our resources, we have never yet managed to do it.” How Vancouver would be different if we kept these words. How Tenth would be different if we kept these. How a family would different if kept these.
The ten words, the Ten Commandments, are a way that God expresses his love for us and for the world, but they are also the way that we express our love for God. In the Psalms and the Gospels, as we saw in the Practicing the Presence series, keeping God’s word is a way we express our love for God. Jesus in John 14:15 says “if you love me you will keep my commandments.”
The first command is, verse 7: “You shall have no other Gods before me.” Verses 8-10 are similar:
"You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God…
The Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and the Jews combine these two commandments “You shall have no other Gods before me” and the commandment “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything.”
Clearly, the first two commandments are related so we are going to take them both today.
The essence of the Ten Commandments can be distilled in this first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me.” Joy Davidman, the wife of C. S. Lewis in her book, Smoke on the Mountain, which is a wonderful commentary on the Ten Commandments, argues that every prohibition in the Ten Commandments has a correlating positive exhortation. She writes that “thou shalt have no other Gods before me” must include “thou shalt have me” for thou shalt put God first. No other gods; no other idols before me.
The Ten Commandments reflect our design…the way that we have made. The commandment to put God first is not so much a duty, as it is way for us to honour our design. We were created to worship and serve God. But if we don’t worship and serve the Living God, the built-in desire to serve God will be redirected to worship and serve something else.
The Bible says in Romans 1:25: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”
We were created to worship the Living God, but instead of worshiping and serving the Creator we have chosen to worship and serve created things. This breaking of the first commandment is the essence of sin. The philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, in Sickness Unto Death, defines sin as making something more central in our life than God himself, to take something good in our life, and make it an ultimate thing, a place that should only be reserved for God.
The essence of sin is looking to something or someone other than God as our primary source of identity and meaning.
At its core, sin is about turning to a counterfeit god, an idol. As we alluded to last Sunday, a counterfeit god might be a romantic relationship or having a particular kind of family. An idol might be the approval of someone important in your life. It might be career or making money. It might be your beauty or your athletic ability or your brains, or some great cause. It might even be the Christian ministry. Sin or idolatry is about turning to something of particular interest and our hearts saying, “If I have that, then I know I will have value or significance.”
How would we know if we had an idol in our heart?
Archbishop William Temple once said, “Your religion is what you do with your solitude.” Or put another way, the true God of your heart is what your thoughts effortlessly go to when there is nothing else which is demanding your attention. What occupies your mind when you have nothing else to think about? What do you daydream about? Do you dream about a romantic relationship with a particular person. You dream about a perfect career scenario… a car…a certain kind of home.
Now, of course, we all have these kinds of daydreams, but they do not necessarily indicate they are idols in our heart. But if we become preoccupied with these things, if we feel that if we didn’t get this thing we wouldn’t be happy or would we despair--then maybe this thing in our heart has become too important to us…something we are turning to for our identity and meaning. If we are preoccupied with something—could it be that we have a counterfeit god? If we don’t get what we were hoping for—then disappointment is a natural response, but if we feel that we would experience despair if we didn’t get that—could it be that that good thing in our life has become too important to us, an ultimate thing, an idol?
We all have idols. John Calvin said, “The human heart is a factory for making idols. “ A mentor of mine, who has taught me more about the nature of idolatry that any living human being, Presbyterian Pastor Tim Keller, in his book, Counterfeit Gods, says, “Another way to discern what is true love is to look at how you spend your money.” Jesus said, “Where treasure is there your heart will be also.” Whatever your money flows most effortlessly toward may indicate your heart’s greatest love. When we honestly look at our lives, is there something we are spending a disproportionate amount of money on?
We live in a part of the world here on the west coast of North America where appearance is very important. There is nothing wrong with eating healthy and exercising, seeking to be good stewards of the body that God entrusted to us, but here in North America we can spend a disproportionate amount of money on our bodies, not so much in response to the leading of God in our life, but in response to the subtle persuasion of the advertising industry, which suggests that we are a loser if we don’t have a particular kind of body.
I recall talking with a Christian woman who seemed quite conflicted about whether it was right to spend thousands of dollars on she deemed unnecessary cosmetic surgery. By unnecessary she meant kind of cosmetic surgery that would be help reverse some of effects of giving birth to a child and aging—she didn’t mean correcting kind of gross disfigurement because of an accident… she was taking about cosmetic surgery motivated not by necessity, but by vanity. If we end up spending up a disproportionate amount of money on how we look, whether it is with cosmetic surgery or else related to our bodies disproportionate or leisure or entertainment or our children, our spending may reveal an idol. Part of the reason that I teach from the Scriptures, “If you want to be true follower of Christ, give at least the first tenth of your income (your tithe) to God, because it is a significant symbol that we are seeking to love God first and most.” Yes, of course, we tithe because God commands it the Old Testament and Jesus affirms it in the New Testament, but more importantly for us—our tithe is an expression that you want God first.
(review)
And then the third test as to whether you have an idol is to look at our emotions. Mardi and I have taught on this before. But, ask yourself is there something that, if you lost it, would make you despair…make say what’s the point of life now? Is there something or someone in your life that if you had it and lost it or were not able to get it in the first place your heart says I not just experience disappointment, but despair—some loss that might you say “I can’t be happy now” or “My life seems utterly empty.” If so, could it be that something has become too important for you…an idol?
The reason that God says “You shall have no other Gods before me” is to not make for yourself an idol in any form because we were made to put God first, and because no idol can satisfy the deepest longing of our heart… Remember the Ten Commandments are a way to express our love for God. They are also a way that God expresses his love for us. God realizes, that no matter what idols we turn to, no matter how glittering and promising they may seem, they will eventually fail us.
As I shared at the Connections dinner, I used to live in Boston and I sort of loosely followed Tom Brady’s career. Tom Brady is the quarterback for the New England Patriots. When Tom won his third Super Bowl, while he was still in his twenties, he was being interviewed on 60 Minutes. The interviewer Steve Kroft was asked him, “How does it feel to be still in your twenties and to have won 3 Super Bowls. That puts you in a very special, elite category.” Brady candidly told Kroft that he felt like something was still lacking in his life:
Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, 'Hey man, this is what [it's all about].' I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me? I think, 'It's got to be more than this.' I mean this isn't—this can't be—all it's cracked up to be.
Kroft pressed Brady as to what the right answer was, and Brady added:
What's the answer? I wish I knew… I love playing football, and I love being quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts about me that I'm trying to find.
No career achievement, no romantic relationship can fully satisfy us.
C. S. Lewis says, “Nothing in this world can completely satisfy us because we were made for something beyond this world; we were made for God.”
So how do we honour the first commandment which, by the way, as we will see in the series will, in turn, will enable us to honour all the commandments? The Scriptures teach that we break the power of a counterfeit god by exposing ourselves again and again to the greater beauty of Jesus Christ.
When I was speaking at Wheaton College, a Christian liberal arts college just outside of Chicago, after my presentation to the faculty in the department for spiritual formation one of the professors, Dr. David Setran, remarked that whenever his wife was pregnant, for some reason she would have this craving for steak. They would always buy their steak at a low-end discount store named Jewel (like our Buy Low Foods). But in the town of Wheaton there was also this upscale butcher shop, a place they couldn’t really afford to shop at. But they always wondered what the steak at this shop would taste like. They daydreamed about it. One day when his wife was pregnant they splurged and bought some steak from this higher-end butcher. They cooked it and ate it. Then in unison, they said to each other: “We can never eat Jewel steak again.” Part of the way that we are set free from lesser gods is by feeding ourselves on the real thing—on God himself.
The idols of this world will ultimately let us down. They are like cheap frozen TV dinners with a great photo on the cover of steak, mashed potatoes, and peas that don’t appear mushy. When you eat it, you not satisfied.
We experience freedom from the idols of our heart when we feast on the Living God.
We will be freest from idols when we are most satisfied in God.
The reason we are emphasizing Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus in Scripture and Prayer this coming year is not so that we just get more knowledge about the Bible, but so that we will be led in Scripture and in prayer: face to face with the Living God, so that we will come to know him more deeply. So, our relationship with God moves from a grainy black white image to a colour. It is in coming to know God more intimately and indwelling his son Jesus and having his words deeply indwell us that we can actually live out the Ten Commandments.
So it is our prayer that through practicing the presence emphasis, that first of all we will come to know God and go deeper in our friendship with Jesus Christ; we will know the cleanings and filling of the Holy Spirit; through our deepening friendship with God we will be nourished and will flourish. Through these ten words we will experience God’s love for us and express our love for God by keeping them.
Let’s pray together.
Has something come between you and God?
Perhaps some good thing that has too important?
Something that with our which you feel you would be happy or fulfilled or have significance or value. If so, pray these words from Ezekiel:
24 " 'For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
Series: The Ten Commandments
Ten Commandments M1: Sermon Notes (10 09 26)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: No God But God
Text: Deut. 5:1-10
BIG IDEA: God expresses his love for us through the Ten Commandments, and we express our love for him for him by keeping them.
Other than the 23rd Psalm which begins with the words “The LORD is my shepherd…” the Ten Commandments are probably the most famous passage of Scripture in the entire Hebrew Scriptures, or the Old Testament. Most followers of Jesus Christ would say that the Ten Commandments are important, but how many could we actually recite? (use one minute)
Take out your sermon outline just for a moment and see how many of the Ten Commandments you can actually write down. Did you get 10, or 7, or even 4? I hope you don’t feel too shamed if you couldn’t name many--because most people in the West can’t name the Ten Commandments.
A recent survey of 1200 people, aged 15-35, found that most of those polled could not name more than two of the Ten Commandments, and they weren’t very happy about some of the others when they were told about them! (3rd service Jane Ty (one of our interns) shared with me that when she was in class at Ambrose University (it’s important to know that this is the university of our denomination, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, it’s a school where you have to profess to being a committed Christian to be admitted, a school where many of the students aspire to become pastors or missionaries) so Jane our intern is in a class at Ambrose University when one of the Old Testament professors asked the students, “How many of you here can name all 10 of the Commandments?” at least half could not.)
So if you can’t name all of the Ten Commandments, I hope you don’t feel bad, but I do hope and pray that you would feel motivated during this series to learn them and make them a part of you. Someone has said that human beings have made some 33 million laws, but they still have not been able to improve on the Ten Commandments.
Even though the Ten Commandments are famous, their purpose is frequently misunderstood.
Many religious people believe that the Ten Commandments are the way to gain the acceptance and approval of God. Many people believe that if they keep most of them most of the time, when they die, God will look at their valiant effort to keep the Ten Commandments and will open the door of heaven and invite them in. People who are of a more secular bent are often uncomfortable and turned off by the idea that God, or anyone else, would “impose” a set of rules on them. They view the Ten Commandments, or any other code that would seek to guide human behavior as being like hail, spoiling an otherwise pleasant day in the park.
One of the best ways to keep us from imposing some kind of myth onto the Scripture, and to help us avoid misinterpreting what God intends, is to look at a passage in its original context.
So let’s look at the origins of the Ten Commandments.
Please turn to Deuteronomy 5:1-10:
1 Moses summoned all Israel and said:
Hear, Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today. Learn them and be sure to follow them. 2 The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. 3 It was not with our ancestors [a] that the LORD made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today. 4 The LORD spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain. 5 (At that time I stood between the LORD and you to declare to you the word of the LORD, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain.) And he said:
6 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
7 "You shall have no other gods before [b] me.
8 "You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 9 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 parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 10 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Pray:
(Map) In this message, we will look at the context of the Ten Commandments. We will look at where and why they were given to us and we’ll look at how we can honor God and our design by keeping the first commands to put God first.
I want us to look specifically at verse 6 to get a sense of the context.
6 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
As you read the Old Testament (and hundreds of you have joined our movement to being in the Scriptures at least 15 minutes a day four times a week so you’ll pick up on this if are you new to Scripture as you read the Word) you will see how God delivers his people out of Egypt, out of a land where they have been slaves for some 400 years. He miraculously parts the Red Sea, and under the leadership of his servant Moses leads them out.
In the book of Exodus we see how God saves his people, the Hebrews, from the land of Egypt where they have been slaves. After saving them, he gives them the Ten Commandments. He does not give his people the Ten Commandments in order as way for them earn their deliverance from Egypt. No, he first saves his people from the land of Egypt; and then he gives them the Ten Commandments.
And God does not give us his Ten Commandments so that we can win the approval of God and earn the forgiveness of our sins. No, the Ten Commandments have been given to us to show how we can flourish in a relationship with God who has already accepted us…who has already forgiven us our sins. 2x.
And if you have never turned to God and received the forgiveness of your sins; if you have never, as far as you know, been welcomed into God’s arms, you can turn to him. God became a human being in Jesus Christ, died on a Roman cross, offering himself as a sacrifice to bear your sin and mine, so that we could be restored to a relationship with our Creator. If we turn from our sins, which the Bible calls repentance, and ask God to forgive our sins, and bring us into a relationship with himself, he’ll do that. When you have done that, you become a person positioned to flourish in a relationship with God by living the Ten Commandments.
(transition)
Take a moment to look at verses 2-4 of Deut. 5.
In verse 2 we read: “The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Horeb.” Horeb is simply another name for Mount Sinai.
In verse3 and 4 we read: “It was not with our ancestors [a] that the LORD made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today. The LORD spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain.”
The verse describes how the Ten Commandments were given in the context, according to verse 4, where the LORD spoke in a face to face conversation out of the fire of Mount Sinai. God here reveals his personal name Yahweh and keeps emphasizing I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord your God. So it was a personal and intimate time. And that through this conversation the LORD establishes his covenant relationship with us.
What is a covenant relationship? It is a relationship that is based on a solemn promise. Marriage is a covenant relationship. It is a relationship based on a promise to be faithful and to love our partner, for richer, for poorer, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.
A friendship can also be based on a covenant--as was true of David and Jonathan’s friendship, the friendship between Naomi and Ruth, her mother-in-law. A covenant creates a kind of safety and security in a relationship so that it can flourish. And God enters into a covenant relationship with us so that our relationship with him can flourish—so that it can be deep and intimate.
In Deut. 5:29 we read:
29 Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!
The word “might go well with” means “absolute, complete, flourishing.” How so?
The Ten Commandments are simply ten words in Hebrew. But as the best biblical scholars have affirmed, they are more than just ten words engraved on a stone tablet, they are the verbal expression of the holiness and love of God, and they show us how to relate to God and each other. The first four commandments--You shall have no other gods before me; no idols; don’t use the name of God in vain; observe the Sabbath—show us how to honour God, who is holy and how we love him. The following six speak of honouring our parents, no murder, no adultery, not stealing, not lying, not coveting, show us how we honour and love our neighbour.
The ten words are more than ten engravings on a stone tablet—they express the very character of God. They give us the most fundamental information in the universe—how we relate to our Creator and our fellow human beings. They reflect the very character of the Living God, and because we are made in God’s image, they also reflect our character. The truths are engraved not only on stone, but on the very fabric of our lives. This is part of the reason why while the religions of the world are in so many fundamental different forms (some affirming there is one God… other religions asserting there are countless gods… some no gods at all; some affirming a life after death, others denying this), if you look at the teachings on what it means to live as a human being in the world, they all in some way, mirror the Ten Commandments. Because the Ten Commandments are a reflection of God, and because we are made in God’s image, they are a reflection of us. So even if we have never read them, there is a part of us that knows them because they have been engraved onto the conscience of every human being (as God affirms in Romans 1).
Remember the context of the Ten Commandments. They were given to God’s people after he had saved them from the land of Egypt where they had been slaves, in a context where he was establishing a loving, marriage-like covenant with his people.
When you summon all that is best in you and commit yourself for the rest of your life to a man or a woman in marriage, you bring a baby into your home that you want, you are not going to be relating to that person in a way that will wreck the relationship or wreck their lives. No, you will set up some guidelines that will enable your relationship to deepen and flourish. So it is with God, God whose love far surpasses our own, set up a series of guidelines in his word for us that will enable us to grow and flourish in a relationship with him and with one another. (Paolo’s photo)
If we honor the Ten Commandments, we honour God and our design.
You can sail into the wind, but you can’t sail directly into the wind. You can sail about 45 degrees into the wind, but you can’t sail directly into the wind. If you try to sail directly onto the wind, you’ll find you can’t do it, your sails cannot harness the energy of the wind. If you say to yourself you are just going to toss the rules of sailing and forget the rule of the wind. You are not going to be sailing. There are certain laws in sailing…the laws the laws of the wind that you must honour in order to flourish on the water.
And so it is in life. Our Maker has established certain laws in the universe that reflect the nature of things. Dorothy Sayers says, There is a difference between saying: "If you hold your finger in the fire you will get burned" and saying, "if you whistle at your work I shall beat you, because the noise gets on my nerves". The law against whistling at work is arbitrary and may or may not be enforced, but the law of the fire is reflects the very nature of the way things are. If all of members of parliament and all the members of congress from all the governments of the world were to assemble here in Vancouver and were to pass a law saying “fire no longer burns”—the first member of parliament who put his hand in fire would soon recognize that law of the fire is very far from the law against the law against whistling at work. He would discover that you never really break the law of the fire you just break yourself over it.
And so it is with the Ten Commandments, because they reflect our nature. We don’t really break them; we just break ourselves over them. Conversely, if we honour God, we also honour ourselves because they reflect our design. The Ten Commandments were not given to ruin our lives, but they are an expression of God’s love for us, of his desire for us to flourish.
Can you imagine how different world would be if we kept then Ten Commandments. Our world would be an entirely different place. But despite all our resources, we have never yet managed to do it.” How Vancouver would be different if we kept these words. How Tenth would be different if we kept these. How a family would different if kept these.
The ten words, the Ten Commandments, are a way that God expresses his love for us and for the world, but they are also the way that we express our love for God. In the Psalms and the Gospels, as we saw in the Practicing the Presence series, keeping God’s word is a way we express our love for God. Jesus in John 14:15 says “if you love me you will keep my commandments.”
The first command is, verse 7: “You shall have no other Gods before me.” Verses 8-10 are similar:
"You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God…
The Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and the Jews combine these two commandments “You shall have no other Gods before me” and the commandment “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything.”
Clearly, the first two commandments are related so we are going to take them both today.
The essence of the Ten Commandments can be distilled in this first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me.” Joy Davidman, the wife of C. S. Lewis in her book, Smoke on the Mountain, which is a wonderful commentary on the Ten Commandments, argues that every prohibition in the Ten Commandments has a correlating positive exhortation. She writes that “thou shalt have no other Gods before me” must include “thou shalt have me” for thou shalt put God first. No other gods; no other idols before me.
The Ten Commandments reflect our design…the way that we have made. The commandment to put God first is not so much a duty, as it is way for us to honour our design. We were created to worship and serve God. But if we don’t worship and serve the Living God, the built-in desire to serve God will be redirected to worship and serve something else.
The Bible says in Romans 1:25: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”
We were created to worship the Living God, but instead of worshiping and serving the Creator we have chosen to worship and serve created things. This breaking of the first commandment is the essence of sin. The philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, in Sickness Unto Death, defines sin as making something more central in our life than God himself, to take something good in our life, and make it an ultimate thing, a place that should only be reserved for God.
The essence of sin is looking to something or someone other than God as our primary source of identity and meaning.
At its core, sin is about turning to a counterfeit god, an idol. As we alluded to last Sunday, a counterfeit god might be a romantic relationship or having a particular kind of family. An idol might be the approval of someone important in your life. It might be career or making money. It might be your beauty or your athletic ability or your brains, or some great cause. It might even be the Christian ministry. Sin or idolatry is about turning to something of particular interest and our hearts saying, “If I have that, then I know I will have value or significance.”
How would we know if we had an idol in our heart?
Archbishop William Temple once said, “Your religion is what you do with your solitude.” Or put another way, the true God of your heart is what your thoughts effortlessly go to when there is nothing else which is demanding your attention. What occupies your mind when you have nothing else to think about? What do you daydream about? Do you dream about a romantic relationship with a particular person. You dream about a perfect career scenario… a car…a certain kind of home.
Now, of course, we all have these kinds of daydreams, but they do not necessarily indicate they are idols in our heart. But if we become preoccupied with these things, if we feel that if we didn’t get this thing we wouldn’t be happy or would we despair--then maybe this thing in our heart has become too important to us…something we are turning to for our identity and meaning. If we are preoccupied with something—could it be that we have a counterfeit god? If we don’t get what we were hoping for—then disappointment is a natural response, but if we feel that we would experience despair if we didn’t get that—could it be that that good thing in our life has become too important to us, an ultimate thing, an idol?
We all have idols. John Calvin said, “The human heart is a factory for making idols. “ A mentor of mine, who has taught me more about the nature of idolatry that any living human being, Presbyterian Pastor Tim Keller, in his book, Counterfeit Gods, says, “Another way to discern what is true love is to look at how you spend your money.” Jesus said, “Where treasure is there your heart will be also.” Whatever your money flows most effortlessly toward may indicate your heart’s greatest love. When we honestly look at our lives, is there something we are spending a disproportionate amount of money on?
We live in a part of the world here on the west coast of North America where appearance is very important. There is nothing wrong with eating healthy and exercising, seeking to be good stewards of the body that God entrusted to us, but here in North America we can spend a disproportionate amount of money on our bodies, not so much in response to the leading of God in our life, but in response to the subtle persuasion of the advertising industry, which suggests that we are a loser if we don’t have a particular kind of body.
I recall talking with a Christian woman who seemed quite conflicted about whether it was right to spend thousands of dollars on she deemed unnecessary cosmetic surgery. By unnecessary she meant kind of cosmetic surgery that would be help reverse some of effects of giving birth to a child and aging—she didn’t mean correcting kind of gross disfigurement because of an accident… she was taking about cosmetic surgery motivated not by necessity, but by vanity. If we end up spending up a disproportionate amount of money on how we look, whether it is with cosmetic surgery or else related to our bodies disproportionate or leisure or entertainment or our children, our spending may reveal an idol. Part of the reason that I teach from the Scriptures, “If you want to be true follower of Christ, give at least the first tenth of your income (your tithe) to God, because it is a significant symbol that we are seeking to love God first and most.” Yes, of course, we tithe because God commands it the Old Testament and Jesus affirms it in the New Testament, but more importantly for us—our tithe is an expression that you want God first.
(review)
And then the third test as to whether you have an idol is to look at our emotions. Mardi and I have taught on this before. But, ask yourself is there something that, if you lost it, would make you despair…make say what’s the point of life now? Is there something or someone in your life that if you had it and lost it or were not able to get it in the first place your heart says I not just experience disappointment, but despair—some loss that might you say “I can’t be happy now” or “My life seems utterly empty.” If so, could it be that something has become too important for you…an idol?
The reason that God says “You shall have no other Gods before me” is to not make for yourself an idol in any form because we were made to put God first, and because no idol can satisfy the deepest longing of our heart… Remember the Ten Commandments are a way to express our love for God. They are also a way that God expresses his love for us. God realizes, that no matter what idols we turn to, no matter how glittering and promising they may seem, they will eventually fail us.
As I shared at the Connections dinner, I used to live in Boston and I sort of loosely followed Tom Brady’s career. Tom Brady is the quarterback for the New England Patriots. When Tom won his third Super Bowl, while he was still in his twenties, he was being interviewed on 60 Minutes. The interviewer Steve Kroft was asked him, “How does it feel to be still in your twenties and to have won 3 Super Bowls. That puts you in a very special, elite category.” Brady candidly told Kroft that he felt like something was still lacking in his life:
Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, 'Hey man, this is what [it's all about].' I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me? I think, 'It's got to be more than this.' I mean this isn't—this can't be—all it's cracked up to be.
Kroft pressed Brady as to what the right answer was, and Brady added:
What's the answer? I wish I knew… I love playing football, and I love being quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts about me that I'm trying to find.
No career achievement, no romantic relationship can fully satisfy us.
C. S. Lewis says, “Nothing in this world can completely satisfy us because we were made for something beyond this world; we were made for God.”
So how do we honour the first commandment which, by the way, as we will see in the series will, in turn, will enable us to honour all the commandments? The Scriptures teach that we break the power of a counterfeit god by exposing ourselves again and again to the greater beauty of Jesus Christ.
When I was speaking at Wheaton College, a Christian liberal arts college just outside of Chicago, after my presentation to the faculty in the department for spiritual formation one of the professors, Dr. David Setran, remarked that whenever his wife was pregnant, for some reason she would have this craving for steak. They would always buy their steak at a low-end discount store named Jewel (like our Buy Low Foods). But in the town of Wheaton there was also this upscale butcher shop, a place they couldn’t really afford to shop at. But they always wondered what the steak at this shop would taste like. They daydreamed about it. One day when his wife was pregnant they splurged and bought some steak from this higher-end butcher. They cooked it and ate it. Then in unison, they said to each other: “We can never eat Jewel steak again.” Part of the way that we are set free from lesser gods is by feeding ourselves on the real thing—on God himself.
The idols of this world will ultimately let us down. They are like cheap frozen TV dinners with a great photo on the cover of steak, mashed potatoes, and peas that don’t appear mushy. When you eat it, you not satisfied.
We experience freedom from the idols of our heart when we feast on the Living God.
We will be freest from idols when we are most satisfied in God.
The reason we are emphasizing Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus in Scripture and Prayer this coming year is not so that we just get more knowledge about the Bible, but so that we will be led in Scripture and in prayer: face to face with the Living God, so that we will come to know him more deeply. So, our relationship with God moves from a grainy black white image to a colour. It is in coming to know God more intimately and indwelling his son Jesus and having his words deeply indwell us that we can actually live out the Ten Commandments.
So it is our prayer that through practicing the presence emphasis, that first of all we will come to know God and go deeper in our friendship with Jesus Christ; we will know the cleanings and filling of the Holy Spirit; through our deepening friendship with God we will be nourished and will flourish. Through these ten words we will experience God’s love for us and express our love for God by keeping them.
Let’s pray together.
Has something come between you and God?
Perhaps some good thing that has too important?
Something that with our which you feel you would be happy or fulfilled or have significance or value. If so, pray these words from Ezekiel:
24 " 'For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
posted by Shigematsu at 6:40 PM
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