This week begins our January series at Mercyhouse. We will be taking a closer look at the Ten Commandments. Each week we are going to be looking at a different commandment. For those of you who are math whizzes, you may have noted that there are not ten Sundays in January, yet there are ten commandments, so how is this going to work? Well, we are simply not going to look at all of the commandments in detail. Some will have to be skipped.
Before we jump in to the sermon, let us pray.
I feel like it would be irresponsible to just jump in to a discussion about the commandments without first recapping Israel’s history up to the point at which God gives them these laws. I debated where to start, and I think we need to go all the way back to Abraham. Abraham was the Father of the Israelites. It was Abraham that we see God initially making the covenant that is going to come to fruition with Moses and this generation of Israelites. The promise that God made to Abraham was that he would bless Abraham’s offspring. He would give them the land of Canaan- what became known as the Promised Land. Now at the age of 100 Abraham had a son as a sign of this covenant. He named him Isaac. Isaac also had a son, Jacob. Through various experiences, trials, failures, and wins, Isaac and Jacob also come to know the Lord God. Jacob has a son, Joseph, who is sold into slavery by his brothers, and ends up in Egypt. Joseph also had faith in God, though, and God uses this evil for his own purposes. Joseph climbs the ranks of Egypt’s nobility because of gifts that God has given him, and eventually is able to save his family because of the influence he had with Pharaoh.
Now because of the favor they were receiving in Egypt, Jacob and his family decide to stay there, and a “Jewish”, although they are not called that yet, root takes hold. Later however, we read in Exodus that a Pharaoh emerged who didn’t know this Joseph and what he had done. This Pharaoh then enslaves the Israelites. This is where the book of Exodus begins. Israel had been enslaved for over 400 years when we pick up the story of Moses. The Promised Land was looking more and more like a myth, however God is still at work.
At about this time, it just so happens that a Jewish baby named Moses makes his way into the royal family of Pharaoh. It happens through a decree that all male Israelites should be killed, and once again, like with Joseph, we see God using evil for his good purpose. I want to make it clear here that God did not cause the Evil, he was not excited that Pharaoh was killing all these babies, He is just bigger that the Evil that Pharaoh caused, and was able to cause His good plan to come about anyway. He was able to use the evil for good, but he in no way caused the evil. I also want to note that this is also not an excuse to sin. We should never say that it was good that evil happened simply because God was able to use it for His plan.
Back to the history though. Moses is raised by Pharaoh, but knows about his slave roots, and one day he murders and Egyptian. He flees the country, and soon is going to have the experience of a lifetime. He encounters God face to face. From this experience he has a real conversion, and God raises him up to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land. Eventually Moses goes back to Egypt and demands that Pharaoh, “Let God’s people go.” Pharaoh says no, and one by one God causes plagues to come upon Egypt. If you were here in October, you may remember that each plague God caused had a corresponding Egyptian God, so not only is God punishing Pharaoh for his evil, he is at the same time showing the world that he is bigger that Egypt’s Idols.
Eventually, after the curse of the firstborn son, in which any house not marked with the blood of the lamb lost its first born son, Pharaoh lets Israel go. He changes his mind though, and God has to protect this fledgling country from Pharaoh’s armies. God leads them tot the Red Sea, where he allows Israel to cross, but drowns Egypt. God then provides water for a thirsty nation, and after that bread from heaven. A pillar of fire lead them at night, and a pillar of smoke by day. Every step of the way god was teaching this new nation what it meant to depend upon him. Finally they come to Mount Sinai, and Moses goes to get the Ten Commandments from God, which is where we pick up the story.
Up to this point, all the Israelites know is slavery and Egypt. Once God has brought them out of the immediate danger of death, he brings them to Sinai for some laws. This seems kind of strange, doesn’t it? Why doesn’t God just bring them to the Promised Land right away and then set some ground rules? Well it has everything to do with their slavery. Up to this point, God has been Israel’s God. He knows how to do this. He has never stopped doing this. He had always remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He had never forsaken his people.
Israel on the other hand is a different story. God’s covenant with them read as follows, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” But all Israel knows is how to be slaves. Sure there are still people who worship Yahweh, but Egypt’s culture has slipped in as well. Israel had no idea how to be God’s people, because they had never done it. So the first thing God does for them is tell them how to be his people. This is the reason for the Ten Commandments. This is why it is of first importance. Israel can’t keep their part of the covenant if they don’t know what it is. So God tells them on Mount Sinai what it means to be his people.
This is the same pattern for us today. God calls us from slavery, he frees us from what ever god is ruling our life, he brings us to a safe place, and then he starts to give us some new ways to live, right. Just like God doesn’t demand that Israel obey these rules before he saves them, Jesus doesn’t demand that we become clean and obey his rules before he saves us. He saves us before we know what it means to be his children, his people, and then teaches us later.
So there Israel is, half way between where they came from and where they are going, with no clue what it truly means to be God’s people, and God gives Moses the Ten Commandments- which would make you think that we have gotten to the sermon, but you’d be wrong. Before we get to the second commandment, we need to have the first. And here it is
"I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 "You shall have no other gods before me.”
So that is the first commandment. Have no God’s before Yahweh. The first way to be god’s people is to love God. But the wording seems like it allows for other gods as well, just not in the first place of honor, doesn’t it? And this wouldn’t have been a strange idea to the ancients. This would have been common place in Egypt. The ancient world, Egypt included was full of cults. I don’t mean the kind of cult you are thinking of since they didn’t even have Kool-Aid in ancient Egypt. The cults were just people who were dedicated to one of the gods above the others. Every god had its cult, or following. Now all gods were given tribute and praise, but some people gave more tribute to certain gods in hopes that they would be blessed by them. So God telling the Israelites to give him the first place of honor wouldn’t have necessarily at that time meant give him the only place.
So after the first commandment to worship him, God tells his people the second commandment.
4"You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
And in this second commandment God tells us to have no idols. There is no room for secondary gods. It is interesting to note that God doesn’t just say don’t make idols, isn’t it? He tells them not to make things and then worship them. To the ancients they more than likely would have been one and the same, but at least I find the wording interesting.
Now does this text mean that we can’t make art? It seems to almost imply that, saying not to make a carved image of anything on the earth or above it, but that can’t be what it really means. The reason for this is that later God is going to tell Moses to build the Ark of the Covenant. This was a box that held the Ten Commandments. Now on this box were 2 angels beautifully adorned. So either God is contradicting himself here, or there is something else going on. Since God doesn’t contradict himself, we need to see what is really meant by God telling Israel to not make carved images. The key is in the next sentence. You shall not worship them.
Let us take a quick digression into how Idols work. The first premise was that the gods were mischievous at best, and evil at worst. They needed to be appeased constantly or controlled somehow. There were many ways to do this, from offering sacrifices from food to your first born, to finding out secret knowledge about the god, like its name, that gave you power over it, to trapping it in an image. Idols were more than just representatives of the gods they depicted, they in some way were the gods depicted. It was believed that if you made the image right, then the god that you just carved would come to dwell in the idol. The idol literally became the god. As such, the created thing was elevated to the creator.
They would create an image, and then start worshipping it. This is the prohibition God is calling for, not an end to art. I have some images of ancient idols, as well as some modern ones, to show you what I mean.
This prohibition against creating images was two fold. As I said before, it was a way to tell the Israelites that is was not okay to have multiple gods, they had to only worship him. At the same time, God is subtly telling Israel not to make an idol of him either. He is letting them know that the rules he plays by are different that the gods of Egypt. You cannot trap him or control him with images or likenesses. He is rewriting the conversation about how a people relate to God. He is not some evil being to be controlled or subdued; he is a loving God that calls his people into relationship with him.
There is one more thing we need to notice about this commandment. It is not just a prohibition about craven images. It is a prohibition about idols of any kind. God says that we are not to bow down or serve anything but him. Now certainly there are still religions that worship idols in the ancient sense of the word. In both Hinduism and Buddhism they offer sacrifices to idols. They still make images and worship them, but the majority of the Western world has long sensed abandoned this practice. There still are Pagans and sun worshippers and those who follow Greek gods and goddesses, but that is mostly a thing of the past. The West tends to laugh and marginalize such people.
I say this, and I hope you can feel the however coming, however we live with as many idols today as did the ancients. In this text, and in Romans 1 we get a feel for what idol worship and Paganism feels like. At the heart of idol worship, paganism, is the worshipping of created things. We give honor and glory to creature and creation rather than Creator. No, there is no longer statues that we bow to, but we are in the midst of an extremely Pagan culture. I brought some pictures of the gods that our society worships.
Our culture has lifted things like money and sex and power to places or gods. We are consumes by them. We worship food, and women, and Hollywood, and in this town, learning, Liberalism, and one night stands. Let me say quickly that I have nothing against learning or liberalism, I am not a conservative attacking the left, I am simply observing that in Amherst, Ma, politics, especially the breed of politics that swings toward the left, has been raised to the position of god. It is its own religion, as is learning in our sweet college town.
What Paul says in Romans 1 is that people rebelled because they worshipped other gods. Moses, when re-giving the ten commandments to the people in Exodus 34 tells them not to just not bow down to idols, but to worship no other gods besides God. And I just said that we, as a culture, worship various things. It seems fitting to take a step back and discuss worship for a second.
What does worship look like? We call this a worship service, but is this all we need to do? Come to church for an hour, sing some songs, and hear a sermon? The bible gives some great insight into what worship really is. If you were to do a word search of the Bible and worship, you would have a ton of things to read through. But some common strands would start to emerge. One of the things you would notice is that worship is almost always associated with bowing down. What is being communicated is a place of submission. The people who are worshipping, either God or something else, and you will find both in Scripture, are elevating whatever they are worshipping. The next thing you would likely notice is that there are sacrifices associated with worship. People are giving the object of their worship material things. Something else you would notice is that there are ceremonies associated with worship. The worshippers are giving up their time. Also there are very often laments or songs being sung, depending on the situation, and sometimes at the same time. The condition of the heart is one that is in agreement with the object of worship, and as such is either grieving its sin, or singing praises to it savior.
In Romans 1 Paul says that humans were worshipping the creation rather than the Creator, in Exodus 34, as Moses re-tells Israel the law, he rephrases the first and second commandment, telling the people to only worship the LORD, and I said moments ago that our society worships many false idols. But what does any of this have to do with us? Well that brings me to today’s sermon. These commandments are not antiquated rules set up for an ancient nation, but rather the guidelines to be known as God’s people.
As I said before, the pattern that God sets up for Israel is important for us as well. It is the same pattern that God uses today. This pattern can even be seen in the order of the commandments. The first is to worship God. The second, to worship nothing else, and then all the rest. It is not the other way around. To be called God’s, we do not need to follow a bunch of rules and be good enough for Him first, and then he calls us his people. God called the Israelites and brought them out of slavery before they had any of the 613 rules he would give them. And once they were free, he doesn’t demand that they now obey to remain his people, but rather that they would just worship him. This is what makes Christianity different from every other religion there is. We don’t need to please God first, but rather just decide to follow him.
When Jesus confronts the adulterous women in John 8 he doesn’t tell her to stop sinning and then he would forgive her, but rather tells her she is forgiven, and then tells her to sin no more. God calls his people, and them asks them to respond in faith, and after that he begins to work on their character. It is not the other way around. You don’t need to be clean to be saved; you just need to want it. Gods will work out the rest of your junk with you after.
God did not demand that Israel obey his rules to be known by him, they were already known by him because of who he is, not because of what they had done. This is also the promise of Christ. You are already known by him, not because of what you have done, but because of what he did. Jesus says he did not come for the clean, but for the sick. He is here to heal you as you are. It is religion that demands you become a good person before you approach the alter, not God. He gives us the first commandment first. Love him. If you don’t have this, none of the others matter. If you are sitting here toady and don’t know Jesus, I tell you he wants you now. He is ready to rescue you from slavery and bring you to the Promise land. All he requires is that you follow him. He doesn’t need you to follow a bunch of rules to make yourself look good, he doesn’t require that you free yourself and meet up with him later. He is here now to rescue you and protect you, and lead you every step of the way until you arrive at Mount Sinai. He would be your God if you would just turn and be his people.
That is not to say that God will allow us to stay in out filth. After he tells Israel to worship him, he tells them to stop worshipping everything else. He tells them that not only does he get the first place in their hearts, he gets the only place. We are to worship God, and only God. Most of us are Christians in the room, and I suspect that we are all thinking, well I love Jesus, so I have these commandments down. But I want to ask all of us if we have them as down as we think we do? How can we tell though? Well, I will tell you. The way to tell if God has the first and only place in your heart is if you are worshipping Him. Now that seems just as simple for us Christians to answer, doesn’t it? We are at a worship service, after all. But how do we know we are really worshipping God, and only God, well as you may have suspected, I intend to tell us.
Remember what worship looked like in the Bible. It looked like people who agreed with God in their heart, gave to God, and submitted to God. The way I was able to say that society worships money, power, and most of all, sex is for multiple reasons. One, pornography is the largest industry in the US, and the world, taking in billions and billions of dollars each year. At Umass kids spend hours each night trying to see naked women. People are inclined to desire it, agree with it, seek after it. The spend time pursuing sex, money buying it, and form communities around it. Sex has become their god. They are worshipping sex.
Drug addicts spend their entire time pursuing their drug. On the show, “Intervention” a TV show on A and E that follows addicts around and offers them help, one of the users ever said that drugs were his god. He spent all his time looking for them, all his money buying them, and all his energy on them. His life revolved around them.
What about for us then? What gets the place of worship in our hearts? Are we giving money to God and his church, or to Starbucks and websites. And I am not talking about just giving in that offering basket when Robert preaches about money and you feel guilty, but week after week giving back to God what he has given you. In the Old Testament worship was associated with gifts and offerings. We usually hear that you should tithe 10 percent, but a devout Jew would have given almost 30 percent of their income. They also would have had to leave some for the poor too.
I don’t want this to turn into a sermon on money, but where your money goes is a good sense of where your worship is. I am also not saying you have to give to this church, but if you are truly worshipping God, and putting him in the first and only place in your heart, you will be giving your money away to somewhere.
I feel I can say all this because Money was a god for me. It consumed me for a very long time. For the first years of my marriage, I didn’t give anything to this church, or anyone, for that matter. When Sarah did give some of our resources away, I was always very upset. Money was an idol I had to care for and covet. God convicted me though. I took this job on church staff making less than nothing, and learned how to give it away anyway. And God provided every step of the way. I am not rich now, and I am not saying you need to sow your faith seed, what I am saying is that I turned to God and put him in the first spot in my heart, and he provided for me needs.
On the same page, when I was out drinking, I always managed to find the money for booze. It was a god that demanded worship, and as such, it needed my resources. So I ask you again, where are your resources going, because that truly is one of your gods. Jesus says where your treasure will be, so your heart will be also. Will your treasure be in God, or some created thing.
At the same time, when we look at worshippers of the Bible, we see that they not only give of their financial resources, but also of their time. Where is your time going? Are you feeding the poor, or playing video games. Are you watching hours of TV a night, or reading the Bible? Are you volunteering at church, or are you doing anything else that you want to do? Now as I say this I must confess that I still watch more TV than I should. I was raised by it, and although I have made strides in the right direction, it still receives much more time than it should. I got rid of digital cable, but still can’t cancel it altogether.
How often do we say we don’t have time to volunteer here or there because it interferes with our “alone” time, as if any of this was ours. How many of us have said we have way to much work to help out in the kitchen Sunday mornings because Monday through Saturday we are goofing off, and we need to make up for it on Sunday. How many of us make time for the internet, flag football, DVDs, music, and snowboarding, but can’t find an hour a day to read our Bible and pray. Where is your time going? It is a good indication of what you are worshipping.
Another great indication of what we are worshipping is what we are doing. What I mean is, does our heart agree with God and His word and we try to follow him, or are we doing our own thing. Do we continue to sin, refusing to confess it to God or others, or confess it but continue to do it anyway? By whose standards are we living? Do we truly want to do what God would have us do, or do we just shrug him off. I am not saying we won’t sin, or we will be perfect angels, but if God is truly the Lord of our life, when we see that we are not doing what is right in his sight it will grieve us. We will want to change, even if we can’t. God and not our personal desire will be the ultimate guide to our life.
Let me say that this is subtle, and for most of the time, seems relatively easy and straight forward. The tests come when what we want disagrees with what God wants. Let me give you an example from my past. After I became a Christian I met this great girl. We started dating, and after a while we became more and more intimate. It got to the point that we were sleeping together. We both knew this was wrong, and would pray for God’s forgiveness after each encounter, but we continued to do it. What I had done was place my own desires, as well as this girl in the place of God. I devoted my heart to her and sex instead of God, and as such was worshipping false idols. How are we still giving ourselves over to lesser gods.
We can go the other way too though. It is not always sex and drinking that takes the place of God, but religion and goodness. Are we trying make ourselves righteous and good, thereby placing ourselves or our rules in the place of God? Do we value the things we have done more than the redemption that God has given us though His Son Jesus Christ? Are we preaching false gospels, that the way to salvation for others and the world is through self improvement, education, health care, regulations, policies, and politics? Do we agree with God that salvation is free to all who would accept it, and there is nothing we need to, save ask, or do we hold to the idea that we must make ourselves clean before we enter the presence of God, demanding that others shape up as well.
Not only did people who worshipped God agree with him, they submitted to Him when they didn’t always want to. They gave their entire lives to God. It is very easy to worship when God is in agreement with us, but to see if He truly has the first and only place in our hearts, we need to look at our actions when He doesn’t agree with us. How do we act when we are in a sinful relationship? Do we repent and turn to God, or pay him lip service and continue to do what the other gods demand? What do we do when we are faced with a decision that will better us financially, but compromise our Christian walk? How good are we at doing what we don’t want to do, because God requires it of us?
What are the other gods that we are worshipping right now? What is getting our money, out time, our energy? Is it God? What are we submitting too, sin or righteousness? What idols are we asking for blessing from, and in return giving ourselves to? Do we seek our comfort in God or TV, God or food, God or sex, God or drugs, God or religion? What is competing right now for the position that only God deserves?
Before we leave here ready to get rid of all the junk we have been worshipping, we need to remember that is not in our strength that we can do this. If we just set about to stop worshipping our idols we would become very religious and legalistic. What would happen is we would create a bunch of ways to not worship those gods we had, and in so doing we would create a new god our of our rules. We would become very self righteous in our ability to follow our new rules or we would become miserable wretches because we couldn’t follow them at all. It seems like a Catch-22, doesn’t it? How then do we obey this second commandment?
The answer is the first commandment. We run back to God. We remember that He is the God that brought us out of slavery, and he is the God that will bring us to the Promised Land. We worship God again, and soon the other gods will disappear. We turn our hearts toward our Savior, crying out for him to heal us, and we receive His Grace. We remember what he has done for us, and fall on our knees at His holy mountain.
Very often we as Christians have this idea that God expects us to be good after our conversion. That our sins were forgiven when we became a Christian we are sure of, but we are as equally sure that God is keeping a tally of the sins we committed after our conversion. We have this idea that since we obeyed that first commandment for a while, we need to know obey all the rest to receive the same grace that we were first given. But the reality of it all is that we are always forgiven. We always have the grace of God. The way to receive it isn’t to try to obey out if fear, but to remember the first commandment and worship God. The way to obey the second commandment is to remember the first.
We leave our idols in Egypt as God leads us to freedom, and then when we make a Golden Calf, we confess this to God and run back to Him again. We bring ourselves before our King, asking Him to bring our hearts in agreement with his. We worship God once again.
If you are here and you are not a Christian, know that God is the same today as he was on Mount Sinai. Jesus came to die for you. He does not demand you become clean, and then give you a place in heaven; he has that place already prepared for you now. Jesus asks that you follow him, that is all. He knows that you have broken commandments, he knows that you are in slavery, he knows that you have other gods. All he wants is you to worship him. There is no other requirement to receive the grace he has for you. Only ask for it and bow to him.
If you are a Christian, hear that again. There is no requirement to receive gods grace than to turn and ask for it. It does not change because you were baptized 20 years ago, or yesterday. God will again lead you from the slavery you are enduring and free you from the Idols that have tired to fill the place of God. So run back to him with all you craven images and ask him to smash them to pieces. Worship him and be his people, as he has always been your God.
Let us pray.
