7 "You shall have no other gods before me."
The New International Version, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House)
1984.
- Exodus 20:3, The New International Version, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan
Publishing House) 1984.
In his Large Catechism, Martin Luther writes: "The person who knows the Ten Commandments perfectly knows the entire Scripture." This may be an overstatement, but the point is clear. It is important for God's people to review the commandments and apply them to our lives. Beginning this morning, we will do just that.
Our summer sermon series begins today with a study of the First Commandment: You shall have no other gods. Through the hymns, lessons, prayers and sermon, the Lord will lead us to a deeper understanding of what it means to "fear, love and trust in God above all things."
"The First Commandment"
In the name of Christ Jesus, dear friends:
Judging from the temperature in this building, you can probably tell that summer is here. That means this is also the season of summer camps, summer picnics, and one of America’s favorite pastimes, the summer vacation. Families are loading up the car or van to travel to destinations all over the country.
Here are just some of the places St. John’s members are visiting this summer: Door County, Devil’s Lake State Park, along with the ever popular cottage or cabin "Up North." Others have made plans to travel as far as New York or Washington D.C. In a matter of hours, my family will be hitting the road for our annual trip to Higgins Lake, MI.
But maybe you aren’t going anywhere this summer. Maybe your vehicle isn’t very reliable. Maybe gas prices are still too high for you. Maybe your idea of the perfect vacation is to relax in the comfort of your own home. Even if there are no travel plans in your immediate future, I would like to invite you to take a trip this summer.
Over the next several weeks, we will be visiting a site thousands of miles and thousands of years away. Our destination is a mountaintop located in the arid desert region of the Middle East. This mountain has been known to shake with earthquake force. Reports say that this peak has been covered with dense smoke and fire. At first, this might not sound like a very good vacation spot at all.
But this particular mountain, Mount Sinai, is a very special place. It is the place where God made his presence known to his people. It is the place where God gave his law to Moses in written form. Within this body of laws is a simple summary of God’s will. We call this summary the Ten Commandments.
Martin Luther once said that "the person who knows the Ten Commandments perfectly knows the entire Scripture." This may be a bit of an overstatement, but the point is clear. It is important for God’s people to review the commandments on a regular basis.
Why is it so important? By studying the commandments we learn what God forbids. By studying the commandments we learn what God commands. By studying the commandments we learn how they apply to our daily lives. Our journey begins today as we take a few minutes to consider what God has to say to us in...
The First Commandment
God spoke from Mt. Sinai: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me" (Ex 20:2,3). When God gave this command to Moses, the children of Israel were finally free. They were not subject to anyone. They didn’t have to answer to anyone. The Lord had rescued them from their oppressors in Egypt. The Lord had promised to give them the land of Canaan.
Because God was solely responsible for the deliverance of his people, what he was asking them to do was not unreasonable. God had protected them. God had provided for them. All the Lord wanted his people to do was acknowledge him, in other words, to worship him as the one and only true God.
And in the First Commandment the Lord requires the same of us. God demands to be number one in our hearts. There can be no substitutes. There can be no rivals. What God put in the form of a prohibition on Mt. Sinai, Jesus puts positively in the gospel lesson for today: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Mt 22:37). God desires that we love him above everyone and everything else.
There is a saying that goes: "Rules were made to be broken." Unfortunately, this statement can be applied rather easily to the First Commandment. Even before Moses came down from the holy mountain with the two stone tablets in his hands, the children of Israel had broken God’s law to pieces.
Some of the Israelites grew impatient as they waited for Moses to come down from the mountain. So they gathered around Moses’ brother, Aaron, and demanded that he make other gods for them to worship. Aaron complied. He took their gold earrings and melted them down and formed them into the shape of a calf. Then the leaders turned to the people and said: "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt" (Ex 32:4). And already the next morning they brought offerings and sacrificed them to their new god.
The worship of the golden calf was a clear violation of the First Commandment. It was a classic example of open idolatry. God said: You shall have no other gods. God’s people said: We can and we will have other gods. But this was not an isolated incident in Israel’s history. The Jews were constantly being tempted to forsake the Lord to worship the idols of their heathen neighbors, gods with names like Baal, Asherah, Molech and Dagon.
Open idolatry was commonplace in the New Testament era as well. When Paul visited the city of Athens on his second missionary journey, he was greatly distressed because he saw that the city was full of idols, a reference to the many gods and goddesses of Greek mythology. In his speech before some of the leading thinkers of the day, Paul even made mentioned of a special altar he had found dedicated "To an unknown God."
Open idolatry is still with us today. Whether it comes in the form of a Shinto shrine in Japan or a Buddhist temple in India or an Islamic mosque on the south side of Milwaukee, billions of people all over the world are bending their knees to gods other than the God of the Bible.
So what does that have to do with us? We aren’t guilty of open idolatry, are we? We begin our worship every Sunday in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We worship the true God. We have no other gods. We keep the first commandment...at least in its outward form.
But idolatry is not always out in the open. And idolatry may not be visible to the naked eye. What would God see if he looked beneath the surface? What would God find if he probed deeper? What would God discover if he explored the secret and innermost desires in our hearts?
In some hearts he would undoubtedly see an idol shaped much like the letter "S." But there is something different about it because there are two long lines running from top to bottom. As he gets closer he would realize that this idol is a dollar sign that represents the god called Money.
This is a very common idol. It causes people to neglect their families. It entices people to act dishonestly. It promises prosperity and security, but in reality this god only leads its followers to unhappiness and despair.
In other hearts God might find an idol shaped something like a thin black book. It is full of dates and times and schedules and appointments. A closer look reveals that this is an idol dedicated to the god known as Success.
Success tries to convince people that it is the most important thing in life. It demands huge amounts of time. But the more a person gives, the more it wants. This idol promises its worshipers feelings of fulfillment, but its benefits are shallow and short-lived.
And then God might come across another idol that is different from the others. It is a mystery at first because it really doesn’t look like an idol at all. But as one gets close enough to read the inscription, it begins to make sense. The words, "To a well-known god," are engraved at the base of a full-length mirror.
This idol is the most dangerous of all because it challenges a person to make a potentially life-changing decision. Who or what is most important in your life? The idol encourages its converts to answer that question by gazing in the mirror. "It’s you," the image in the mirror whispers. "You are most important thing in your life. You deserve better. You deserve more. You...You...You." And when this seductive god gets a person under his control, it is almost impossible to break free.
One or more of these false gods may be tucked away somewhere deep down inside your heart. Or you may be housing other secret idols that go unnoticed by others. But no one is guiltless. No one has kept the First commandment or any other commandment perfectly. No one can honestly say that God comes first in his life every minute of every hour of every day...no one except one. Where every other human being has failed, Jesus was perfect. Jesus lived a sinless life. And his life of perfection began with perfect obedience of the First commandment.
The devil wants us to focus our energies on the trivial so that we neglect those things that are truly important. Jesus modeled proper priorities when he said: "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Mt 6:33). The worldly path to success is to scratch and claw and step on others to get what you want. In humble obedience Jesus prayed to his Father: "Yet not as I will, but as you will" (Mt 26:39). My selfish sinful nature wants me to believe that I am at the center of my own personal universe. Jesus gave a very different testimony when he told Satan: "Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only" (Mt 4:10).
Simply put, Jesus is everything that we are not. We are sinners. He was sinless. We broke God’s commandments into a million pieces. Jesus kept the commandments perfectly. We deserve to be punished for our sins. Jesus subjected himself to the worst punishment imaginable even though he never did one thing wrong.
Jesus took our place. Jesus died our death. And our sins were buried with him in the tomb. That includes every sin we ever committed, every time we fail to keep the First Commandment, every time we put people or things before God, every time we do not give God the glory he deserves.
Jesus’ love for sinners makes us look at the commandments differently. They weren’t made to be broken. They aren’t burdens to bear. They are opportunities to serve. In the time we have left, let’s examine how Christians can and do keep the First Commandment, and how our Lord encourages us to "fear, love, and trust in God above all things."
Christians fear God when we place his Word above everything else. When we worship God, we show that God is important to us. When we study God’s Word, we are saying that we want God to mold us and shape us to be more like him. And the other gods in our hearts are pushed off to the side.
Christians love God when we consider him more dear to us than anyone or anything else. Christians love God when they would rather endure persecution than forsake the truth. Christians show their love for God when they take the time to help a friend, or even an enemy, in need. And the false gods that compete for our time and attention are left behind.
Christians trust God when we rely on him for everything we need. When we pray to the Lord, we acknowledge that our God is kind enough to listen and powerful enough to help. When Christians confess their sins to the Lord, we are saying that we believe that God is good and gracious, and that he keeps his promises. And the other idols in our hearts are swept away forever.
In his Large Catechism, Martin Luther wrote: "If the heart is in a right relationship with God and this commandment (the First) is kept, then all the other commandments will follow of themselves." The Lord put the First Commandment first for a reason. Our relationship with God sets the tone for every other relationship we have.
It is my prayer that our review of the First Commandment will also set the tone for our study of the nine commandments that follow. We ask the Lord to lead us to a deeper understanding of his law. And especially today we ask the Holy Spirit to instill in us the holy desire to fear, love, and trust in God above all things. Amen.