Introduction

 

We have a family tradition in our household called ‘Movie Night’.  Every Saturday night we watch a movie as a family … and pig out on nummy treats … like Fanta, Doritos, LMP, burger rings.  It is a much-loved family tradition.  Yet as joyful as it is … Movie Night DOES have one drawback.  And that is … we have a rule in our house that in order to get treats … you have to eat ALL your dinner.  Now this is LESS of a problem today … given our kids are all teenagers now … and they’ll devour anything.  But when you’ve got 4 LITTLE kids in the house … at least ONE of them isn’t going to like whatever dinner you put in front of them.  And so it USED to be a FIGHT to get our kids … and it was a different kid each meal … to eat their dinner.  Yet the reason Deb and I went through those fights … is because giving your kids nothing but junk food for dinner is not good for growing kids.  And I would TELL my kids this.  I would say ‘IF I just give you treats for dinner … that makes me a derelict parent.  And you don’t want a parent … kids … who doesn't care about you’.

Now the reason I share this … is because we’re starting a new sermon series today … looking at the Top 10 rules that GOD has for his household.  And while very few people can recite the 10 Commandments today … almost everyone has heard of them.  They are the most famous piece of legislation in all of human history.  Yet alongside this … they’re also the most misunderstood.  What I mean is … when MOST people think about the 10 Commandments … feelings of guilt and failure start to rise.  The 10 Commandments quite often make people feel crushed under the weight of religious expectation.  Yet this is not their purpose.

The purpose of the 10 Commandments is just like ANY set of rules that a loving parent sets down for their kids.  It is to give us a life of greatness and recognition.  So for example … WHY do parents say things like (i) you can’t have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat, or (ii) get off your phone?  It’s because parents know too many treats or too much screen time is bad for kids … and they want their kids to have a great life … not a stunted one.  Or how about when parents say (i) share your toys, and (ii) don’t hit?  Why do parents drill those things into their kids?  It’s because if a child doesn’t learn how to play nicely … then no one will want to play with them.  And that leads to a very lonely life.  So if you want your kids to have recognition … have friends … then teach them how to be friendly.

And this is the WHOLE purpose of the 10 Commandments.  They are NOT some arbitrary set of rules … handed down from some distant dictator … designed to take our fun away.  They are the kind of boundaries that a loving parent places around their kids … in order to give their kids a life of greatness and recognition.  And that includes Commandments numbers 1 and 2: (i) have no other gods before me, and (ii) keep yourself from idols.  And this is what we’re looking at today.  We’re looking at how Commandments numbers 1 and 2 are NOT some arbitrary demands from an overly jealous deity … who will tolerate no rivals.  They are the prerequisite for living a life of greatness and recognition.

And I’ve got 3 points to help us unpack these important commands today … as your sermon outline shows.  So we’re going to begin by seeing how Commandment number 1 … is God loving us.  And I’ve titled this (i) Why God demands we have no other gods before him?  We’ll then see how Commandment number 2 … is God loving us.  And THIS is titled (ii) Why God demands we keep ourselves from idols?  We’ll then conclude with our application … which is how to LET God love us … which I’ve titled (iii) How to worship God and not idols.  So please come with me … as we look at how Commandments 1 and 2 … are HOW God gives us a life of greatness and recognition.

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Why God demands we have no other gods before Him?

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And our passage today is The 10 Commandments … though we’re only looking at v. 1-6 this week.  And the 10 Commandments begin with these words:

Exodus 20:1-3 (NIV) And God spoke all these words: 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

Now … on the surface … one COULD suggest that this sounds like one of those overly jealous spouses.  Like imagine if I were to say to Deb ‘you’re never allowed to talk to other men’.  That would be a form of abuse … that type of control.  So is that what God is doing here?  Is he trying to control us … due to some overly jealous NEED to have us all to Himself?  Well to understand this … we need to understand (i) WHO God is, and (ii) WHY he created us.  OK … (i) who is God, and (ii) why did he create us?

And when we look into WHO God is … one of the MAIN things that stand out is that God is relational.  The thing that sets the God of the Bible apart from the ‘gods’ of every other world religion … is that the God of the Bible is Trinitarian.  He is 3 persons in 1 Godhead.  And what the Bible teaches is that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit have been in a perfect … other-person centred … loving relationship with each other for all eternity.  What I mean is … the Father has been communicating with, loving and glorifying … lifting up … the Son and the Spirit for all eternity.  And the Son has been communicating with, loving and glorifying the Father and the Spirit.  And the Spirit has been doing the exact same thing.  Now why is this important?  It’s because the Trinity is self-sufficient.

Understand this … the gods of every other world religion had no one to love … until they created someone to love.  The Bible says the Father, Son and Spirit have been in a loving relationship with each other for all of eternity.  And that’s why Commandment 1 CANNOT be the work of an overly jealous God … because he doesn’t need a relationship with us.  He doesn’t need us to love him or glorify him.  He already has perfect communication, love and glorification within the godhead.

So WHY this command?  Well this brings us to WHY he created us.  And the only possible explanation as to why an infinitely loving and self-sufficient God would create the universe … is because he wants to SHARE his love and glory.  OK … the reason you and I are here … is because God wants OTHERS to enjoy his splendour and majesty.  It’s the meaning of life … isn’t it?  The chief end of man is ‘to bring glory to God and enjoy Him forever’.  It is to declare that God is THE most loving and glorious thing in existence … there is nothing better than him … and then for us to enjoy that glory.  Or as our Vision Statement puts it … delight in Him as our ultimate treasure.

Now … when we understand this … we start to see Commandment 1 in a different light.  No longer is this an angry deity … demanding fealty.  It is a loving Heavenly Father saying ‘I don’t want you being raised or cared for by some OTHER ‘god’.  It’s like if some random bloke tried to kidnap one of my little kids at the Easter Show.  Now I’m not a violent man.  But I would go nuclear on them … in a second.  Why?  Because I love me kids … and I want the absolute best for them.  And no reasonable and loving parent would outsource the raising or care of their children to someone who doesn’t love them as much as they do.

And that’s what Commandment 1 is saying.  It’s God saying ‘I love you.  And I want what is best for you.  And what is best for you … is to be in an intimate and loving relationship with me … your loving Heavenly Father’.

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Why God demands we keep ourselves from idols?

 

So … that’s Commandment number 1.  Commandment number 2 says this:

Exodus 20:4-6 (NIV) “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. 5 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, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

So God IS a jealous God.  But in a good way.  BAD jealously is forbidding my wife from even TALKING to other men.  GOOD jealousy is not wanting my wife to be intimate with other men.  And that’s what God wants.

But isn’t Commandment number 2 a little superfluous?  What do I mean?  I mean imagine I were to stand up here and say ‘you are ONLY allowed to support the St George Dragons’ … because they’re clearly the best team … but then I ALSO said ‘AND you’re NOT allowed to support any other NRL team’.  Like isn’t that a bit redundant?  So why does God say ‘worship the Lord ONLY’ … and in the same breath say ‘and my SECOND commandment is don’t worship any OTHER gods’?

Well to understand Commandment number 2 … we need to understand the word ‘worship’ there in v. 5.  Now the word ‘worship’ is one of the words we keep forgetting the definition of.  So if you want to remember what ‘worship’ is … just remember it’s Old English version … WORTH-ship.  To worship something is to ascribe ultimate worth … or ultimate value to it.  So commandment number 2 is about ascribing MORE value to something than God.  Its saying things like money, or love, or success, or popularity are of greater importance to me … are of greater worth to me … than even God is.

Now you might say ‘but v. 4 is about making wooden statues or stone idols … and bowing down to them.’  And you’d be RIGHT.  But WHY do people bow down and worship stone idols?  It’s because they want something FROM that idol.  Think of it this way:

• Imagine you’re an ancient person … and you’re about to go to war.  Which ‘god’ do you call out to?  You call out to the god of war … right?  Mars for the Romans … Ares for the Greeks, or Baal for the Canaanites.  You call out to the god who you think can give you what you VALUE in that moment.

• Or imagine you’ve just sowed your crops … and now you need it to rain.  Which ‘god’ do you make sacrifices to?  The agriculture gods … like Osiris for the Egyptians, Demeter for the Greeks or Ceres for the Romans.  You sacrifice to the gods who can give you what you REALLY value.

So Commandment number 2 is God telling us to NOT ascribe greater value to things other than Him?  Why?  Because God knows idols are slave masters.  OK … whether they’re literal statues … or ‘idols’ we’ve set up in our hearts … God knows anything we ascribe ultimate value to other than Him … will only end up enslaving us.  OK … they will demand we are ever getting MORE of whatever it is we value … even if it means sinning in order to get it … AND they will keep us in a constant state of anxiety over losing it.

Now … different people will worship different things.  So let me give you some examples:

• When some people become Christians … and they find out that God expects them to tithe … OK … to give at least 10% of their income to God … they’re like ‘yeah … that sounds right.  God has given me everything.  And he asks me to display his worth … by showing he’s more valuable than my money’.  But OTHERS … when they hear about tithing … become angry.  They say ‘how DARE God demand I give up my money’.

• Another example is sex before marriage.  Some people will say ‘well of course we need to be pure in our relationships.  Sex is NOT something to be thrown around.  NO spouse likes hearing about their partners previous sexcapades.  So I’ll wait until marriage.’  Yet OTHERS become angry … because sex is part of how they feel loved by their boyfriend or respected by their girlfriend … and they cannot tolerate losing that.

And we will look DOWN on those who have a different idol to us.  So those who idolise relationships … and are terrified of people being disappointed in them … will look DOWN on workaholics.  They say ‘I would NEVER sacrifice my family for work’.  Yet workaholics will look down on relational people.  They don’t MIND if people don’t like them … so long as they’re succeeding in life.

Now here’s the point.  We ALL have things in our lives … that we think are of greater worth than God.  We have ALL set up idols of some description in our hearts.  And those idols control us … enslave us.  The reason God says the second most important command of all … is keep yourselves from idols … is because he doesn’t want to see his beloved children controlled by such malevolent slave masters.  Commandments 1 and 2 are how God LOVES us.

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How to worship God and not idols?

 

So … final question.  How do we LET God love us?  OK … if we ALL set up idols in our hearts … it’s just part of the fallen human condition … how to we start worshipping God alone … and not idols?  Well there are 3 things we need to do by way of application today.  We need to (i) LISTEN to God, (ii) VALUE God, and (iii) OBEY God.  And we need to do them in that order.

(i) So first … we need to listen to God.  And by listen to God … I mean listen to where God might be shaking your life right now.  Because God shakes people’s lives … in order to protect them.  It’s like the lumberjacks who walk into a forest … and they notice 2 birds building a nest in the tree they’re about to cut down.  So what they do is they start banging on the tree with the backs of their axes.  And after a while the birds think ‘this isn’t such a pleasant place to build a nest after all’.  But they then go to the tree next to it … and start building a nest in THAT tree … which the lumberjacks are going to cut down next.  So they bang on THAT tree too … and the next tree … and the next tree … until the birds finally realise NONE of these trees are a good place for a next … and go and build their nest in a cleft on the side of the cliff.

And this is what God does to people he loves.  He will start to shake our lives up … to get us to stop putting our faith … our value in the wrong things.  And he’ll usually come to us gently to begin with.  It might be a small annoyance … like a preacher saying something you don’t want to hear.  But if that doesn’t work … he’ll start to ramp it up.  And he’ll keep ramping it up until you listen.  As C. S. Lewis said ‘God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, and shouts in our pains.’  So our first point of application today is to ask ourselves ‘where might God be speaking to me right now’?  Because chances are … THAT’S where your idol lies.  So Step 1 … LISTEN to God.

(ii) Step 2 is we need to VALUE God.  You see even if we figure out what our own personal idol is … we can’t just throw it away.  The reason being it will either find it’s way back … OR we’ll just end up replacing it with ANOTHER idol.  The human heart NEEDS something to value.  So we can’t just pull out our idol.  We need to REPLACE it with something of even greater value.

This is why God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac … in Genesis 22.  You see all Abraham ever wanted was an heir.  We see this in Genesis 15.  So now that Abraham HAS an heir … he was in danger of worshipping Isaac.  And so God TESTS Abraham … he was never going to allow Abraham to kill Isaac.  We’re told God TESTS Abraham … by asking him to sacrifice his idol.  Why?  Because God wants to make sure Abraham worshipped God … and not his son Isaac.  And as we know … he passed that test.  He walked up that mountain WITH Isaac … ready to sacrifice him.

So after we figure out what God wants US to walk up the mountain with … it could be our career … it could be likes on social media … it could be our designer wardrobe … it could be our Lego … Step 2 is to replace that idol with the ultimate treasure: God.  And the way we do that is by recognising that God DID sacrifice his Son.  And the reason God sacrificed his Son … was to get you and me.  God wants you and me with him in heaven SO badly … that he gave up HIS ultimate treasure … just to get us.  And when we see that … when we see someone giving up that much for us … it makes us love him more dearly.

(iii) Step 3 … is to then follow him more nearly.  Psalm 1 says the mark of a godly man is not whether he goes to church … or prays.  It’s whether he DELIGHTS in the Law of God.  So let me ask you brothers and sisters … do you WANT God telling you what to do?  Like when you hear something in God’s word that shakes your life a little … do you put your metaphorical fingers in your ears … and say ‘la … la … la … I’m not listening to you God’.  Or do you DELIGHT in the hard things he’s telling you?  Because how you answer that question will tell you what you truly value … what you truly worship.

Let me close with a true story … about a Christian who spent 20 years building his business.  He poured his blood, sweat and tears into this business.  Yet it was running his whole life into the ground.  He could see his wife wasn’t happy.  His kids barely saw their dad.  And so one night he gave his business over to God.  He prayed ‘Lord … I’ve been working like a dog for 20 years now … and for what?  I have heaps of money and heaps of success.  But it hasn’t fulfilled me.  So I’m giving my business over to you.  Tell me what you want.’  And he fell asleep that night easier than he had in 20 years.  He was woken by a phone call at 2am … telling him to get down to his business … because it was on fire.  And he drove down … and watched his business burn to the ground … with a smile on his face.  He had offered up his ‘Isaac’ … and God had told him what to do with it.

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Conclusion

 

And that’s how God’s laws work.  They’re not arbitrary … like every Saturday we’re watching a movie as a family.  They’re the kind of boundaries a loving parent sets down … like ‘get off your phone’.  And if we are able to (i) LISTEN … to where God might be shaking our life, (ii) place our VALUE in the God who sacrificed for us … not the ‘gods’ who demand we sacrifice for them, and (iii) OBEY his laws … not reluctantly … but out of delight … then we are in the best place to have a life of greatness and recognition.  So … 1. Have no other gods before me, and 2. Keep yourself from idols.