Galen Call's Sermon Library
"The Ten Commandments: No Other Gods" - September 13, 1998
Well, today we begin a new series of messages from the book of Exodus this time, and we're dealing with the Ten Commandments. I invite you to open your Bible with me to Exodus chapter 20. We're hearing a lot about the United States House of Representatives right now. How many of you have ever been in that chamber in Washington? Would you lift your hand? If you remember around the edge of the building up near the ceiling, there are the profiles of famous thinkers and lawmakers throughout the ages. They come around this way and right in the center, right where the Speaker of the House would naturally look as he sits in his chair, there is not a profile, there's a full-faced figure who looks at him. That one individual who looks at him and profile there is Moses or at least a likeness of Moses. What the architect of the Capitol was trying to say is that there are many who contributed to the history of the United States and to the making of its laws, but there is one figure who stands above all of the rest and that is Moses who delivered the Ten Commandments. It is an architectural recognition that the Ten Commandments formed the basis of law, social order, and our concept of justice in the United States. The Ten Commandments are protective of life, liberty, human relationships, and the ownership of property. The Ten Commandments exalt the value of life and the individual dignity of women and men. The Ten Commandments are stated in two Old Testament passages, Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. I think it is important for us to consider this morning the context of their first delivery in Exodus 20. Exodus 1 through 15 records the stay of the Israelites in Egypt after the death of Joseph, along with their enslavement and oppression, followed by their deliverance through Moses, God's servant. Those chapters tell us about the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, the journey of three months that followed that until they came to the foot of the mountain where Moses had met God, Mount Sinai. The year was about 1446 B.C. And there at the foot of that mountain Israel camped and there on that mountain God made a covenant with Israel. That is an agreement between this people and himself. It was absolutely an awesome event. As they looked at that mountain it was as though a volcano was erupting. Now I don't think it was a volcano but as you see the description in chapter 19 of the lightning, the thunder, the thick clouds that were on the top of the mountain, the fire that was burning there, along with the sound of a loud trumpet and the quaking of the mountain. You have a picture of a volcano and these people are right at the foot of this inferno on the top of the mountain. It was absolutely awesome. The Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses on the top of that mountain are the moral foundation of the Mosaic Covenant. That is this covenant that God made with Israel through Moses, his servant. They summarize the ethical obligations of the people of the Lord in their agreement with God. Well you say this isn't Israel and I'm not a Jew. So what value are the Ten Commandments to me? Well let me say first of all that they are a succinct statement of the ethical ramifications of God's holiness for all people in all times. Because you see they represent God's character, which is eternal and the same from generation to generation. And so by looking at the Ten Commandments we have an understanding of what God expects of us to ethically. I believe that these commandments are especially important today in our culture. We need to study them, to write them upon our hearts in light of the relativism of our age, which teaches and believes that there are no absolutes of right and wrong. I think one of the benefits of the great tragedy that is being played out in Washington these days is the fact that at least there is again a discussion of values in this country. Of what is right and what is wrong. I heard one commentator on television say that we have now entered into an ethical civil war in the United States. That may be a bit of an overstatement, but the point is clear that there is great disagreement in this country regarding ethics and it shows that we have departed far from the Ten Commandments which form the heart and the core of the values upon which America was founded. We need to study the Ten Commandments not only in church, we need them in schools. We need them understood in all areas of society. We need to have them studied in the legislature of Minnesota. We need to have them studied in the law schools of America. We need to have them studied in the homes of America because the Ten Commandments are crucial for the maintenance of the culture that was founded upon the Constitution. But perhaps the greatest value of the Ten Commandments is beyond all of this. It is that the Ten Commandments by their very nature bring us to the grace of God. That is because the Ten Commandments expose our sinfulness. They tell us how far short we are of meeting God's ethical expectations. They show us that we need a Savior to rescue us from the condemnation that comes also with the law. Lawbreakers need a mediator, and God has provided that mediator for us in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, He is the one mediator between God and men. So we study the Ten Commandments with the expectation that they are going to bring us to Jesus and that we are going to revel in the grace of God even more after we understand what God says in these Ten Words. So let's get to it. Number one, we find this in chapter 20, beginning in verse 1, "Then God spoke all these words saying, 'I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.' Commandment number one, 'You shall have no other gods before me.' That preposition in the Hebrew has been hotly debated by scholars. You shall have no other gods in opposition to me. You shall have no other gods in my sight. You shall have no other gods in addition to me. All of those are possible understandings, but you get the point. No other gods." Now there are two aspects of this first commandment that I want us to think about this morning before we break up and have our tailgate party. The first aspect is this. The identity of the law giver, G. Campbell Morgan, talks about this. When he describes to us the meaning of the name Lord, notice God says, 'I am the Lord your God, all capitals.' Here is that Hebrew name Yahweh, Lord. G. Campbell Morgan says that Yahweh is the combination of three Hebrew words meaning, 'He will be being he was.' Now you have to listen to that to understand that it's saying that he was, he is, and he always will be. What is the meaning of the personal name Yahweh? Charles Ryrie says that it signifies God's dynamic and active self-existence, and that's really the heart of it right there. You and I have existence that is derived. We have derived our existence from our parents, and they from their parents, and so on, from generation to generation, back to the beginning to Adam and Eve who derived their existence from God himself, the Creator. God is entirely different than that. He is self-existent. He does not derive his existence from anything or anyone outside of himself. He was, he is, he always will be, he is self-existent. He is Yahweh. God's pronouncement of this name Yahweh, brackets, the deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. If we had time, we could go back to chapter three when God called Moses on the top of that mountain and said, 'Here's what I want you to do,' and Moses in the conversation with God eventually says, 'Well, who will I say has sent me?' And in verse 14 of that chapter, God says, 'Tell them I am that I am has sent you.' That's the first bracket on the deliverance of the people. God, calling Moses, said, 'Yahweh, sends you.' Sir Walt Kaiser says, regarding that text in chapter three, 'The formula of self-introduction means I am truly He who exists and who will be dynamically present then and there in that situation to which I am sending you.' So God introduces Himself to Moses with that complete thought. Now to be sure, the people of God knew this name Lord before this, indeed when Abram worshiped the Lord just having arrived in Canaan, it says that he called on the name of Yahweh. He knew the name but now it is in Exodus in Moses' lifetime that God is going to expound upon the meaning of this name. And then the other end of the bracket of course is here where the deliverance of the people of Israel has been completed, Yahweh. The I Am is on both sides of that deliverance experience. It is a name that is associated with God's holiness and God's gracious provision of redemption for His people. But He says, 'I am the Lord your God.' The word God is also a personal name for the Supreme Being. It is the plural form here, Elohim, Singler being El. Elohim is the plural of majesty. God says, 'I am Yahweh, the Supreme Mighty One who is the rightful object of all your admiration and your worship.' It is this name that is associated with God's creation. In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth. God further identifies Himself by reminding them of His saving activity. He says, 'I am the one who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.' Kaiser also points out that this further identification is really a formula statement that God gives and He repeats it at least 125 times in the Old Testament. In other words, God wanted to be known by what He had done for His people. He had delivered them from Egypt and the house of slavery. That deliverance was an act of God's grace. Egypt was death and bondage. They languished there, without any hope. But God intervened. He provided for redemption by delivering them on that final night of the judgments by the blood of the Passover lamb, the blood being sprinkled on the doorpost and the lintel of the houses where they lived. The lamb that they killed bore the judgment that the firstborn deserved. And so the firstborn of each family was spared where the lamb was slain and the blood was sprinkled. And then God delivered His people from certain death at the Red Sea by opening the waters before the people and the two million of them or so went across. God made a way of escape. Death in the lamb, resurrection coming up out of the sea, and oh how that pictures wonderfully the death of the lamb of God for our sins. And His resurrection from the dead three days later. God wants to be known by what He has done for us. We today worship Yahweh, our God, who has redeemed us from our slavery to sin, the house of bondage to sin and death, and by the death of the lamb and His resurrection from the dead we have been saved and rescued. Now understand that it is in that context of who God is and His gracious actions toward us that the Ten Commandments are given. The Ten Commandments are given in the context of God's grace. Now the second aspect I want us to look at briefly is the incentive of the law giver. Why did God give this commandment and all of the commandments? Well regarding all of the commandments, the Ten Commandments, let me say that what these commandments are, is not in the first place suggestions. God is not here giving recommendations to His people. He is not encouraging them to take this course of action. He is laying down commandments which are a particular course of action that must be taken. They must be obeyed because they reveal the character of God. Secondly, regarding these commandments, if God here forbids an evil, then the opposite good is also ordered as we will see. God's law is not to be regarded as something that is harsh, that is cruel and it is restriction. Rather the commandments are a kind expression of God's wisdom revealing to us the way to live that will bring the greatest possible good for us as individuals and for us together as a family of people, as a community, as a society. I was talking with my friend Warren Wiersby this week and as he always does, he said, "What are you preaching on?" So I told him and he has just finished a book on Exodus and he said, "You got it yet?" I said, "No." He says, "Well, no wonder. It's not from the publisher yet." I think he was testing me. So we began to talk about the Ten Commandments and he had an interesting statement about them. He said, "The Ten Commandments are an invitation to God's best for our lives." I like that. That's why the commandments are so treasured and valued by the writers of scripture. David says, "They are enlightening." He says, "They are more desirable than gold." Yes, than much fine gold. They are sweeter, he says, than honey because they are God's wisdom revealing to us the way to live that will bring us the greatest possible good. Now regarding this commandment in particular, why this commandment, it is because the religions of the world were polytheistic, had many gods in their religions. Why? Because mankind had degenerated from the knowledge of the true God that all possessed not only in the original creation but then when the human race started over again and the generations following Noah. Everyone had the truth about God, but man in his depravity suppressed that truth and turned to the lie of Satan. And instead of worshiping the Creator, began to worship the creature and so many gods and idols were created by man, Israel became an island of monotheism in a whole sea of polytheism. Now in your university class and religion, on public broadcasting and other places, you will hear liberal theology that is influenced by the theory of evolution that will tell you that in fact monotheism is the result of the evolution of man's religious thinking. Nothing could be further from the truth, it is just the opposite in fact. Monotheism is the result of revealed religion. God has told us the truth. The evolution of man's religious thought is in the other direction, in the direction of polytheism and many gods and many idols. But monotheism is revealed theology and so my point is this. This first command was given to reinforce and to preserve revealed theology and faith. It was given by God to his people to protect them as a holy nation for his messianic purposes. He could not bring the messiah through a people who believed in many gods. They had to believe in the one true God. And so he gave this commandment to them in this covenant to preserve that truth. Now, the sad fact is they didn't always obey it. In fact, they were sent into judgment because they began to worship the gods of the nations around them. The reason that God gave this commandment was to preserve revealed truth, one God, worship him alone. But then also God gave it because he loves his people too much to allow them to stray after false gods of the Canaanites. All you have to do is read about the worship of these gods and you are more sick than you are from reading the Star Report. The immorality, the grossness, the darkness, the tragedies, the human sacrifice that went along with the Canaanite religions is repulsive. And so God gave this commandment to promote the welfare of his people, not only to protect the nation from false religion, but to promote the welfare of his people so that they would not get involved in these false gods and all that went with that. And so he demands singularity of worship. You shall have no other gods in addition to me. The positive side of that is worship the one true God. That's the positive equivalent here. Worship the one true God. Why? Why worship him? First, because he deserves the glory of that worship. He is an awesome God who displayed it on top of that mountain in Sinai. And may I say who displayed it on a much smaller mountain outside the city walls of Jerusalem. He is an awesome God who is worthy of our worship. But he also gives us this commandment because he wants you and me also to avoid the brokenness and the destruction of other gods. We live in a world, in a culture, a society that is not necessarily idolatrous. Increasingly, as other nations move here, we are finding more and more idols coming into the United States. But the absence of gods on the corner streets, on the corners of our streets, in front of buildings, in temples, the absence of those idols does not mean that therefore this commandment really is passe. Because we have our own gods in this kind of a culture, not the least of which is materialism. And the worship of our own intellects, and the technology and so on that we can create from that. The worship of self, which is really the heart of the false idolatry of America. The worship of self, Douglas Byer writes, "God can do little with a person who is self-satisfied or self-confident, God cannot possess, the self-possessed. He is able to do something great through a person only when he or she feels utterly inadequate for the job." And we in the church, we have our own idols. In addition to the idols of the world that tempt us, we have idols within the church like tradition. How many churches are today dead spiritually because they worship tradition? We have idols like family. Yes, that's what I said. Listen to the language that we use, and find there, if you can, the Spirit of Jesus who said, "If you do not forsake even your family and love me first, you're not worthy of me." But how many times do we neglect God and the things of God because of family? Entertainment is a God of the church. There are churches today who are worshiping not the Lord their God, but a style of worship. And that style of worship is more important to them than God himself. You see, we have our own gods, and God says here, "Have no other gods before me." So the closing question is, who is the God of your life? Or what is the God of your life? You see, well, how do I know? What is it that you think about the most? What do you give the most credence to in your life? What do you spend the most money on? Perhaps some of the basic questions, the priority questions, because that's how you find out who your God is because your God has first clean. That's what a God is. A God is that which has first clean on my life. And God tells us here, if you want to have the fullness of life, if you really want to live, that have no other gods in opposition to me in your life. Make sure I'm number one, and then you'll live. Let's pray together. Father God, all of us have to do some very serious heart searching this morning. And so easily do we fall into the worship of other gods, even in the name of worshiping you. Strip away from us, I pray, every false thinking, every deceptive notion that has claimed priority in our lives, let there be nothing that is in opposition to you. This I pray in Christ's name, amen. the Lord. [BLANK_AUDIO]