Well welcome to our first sermon in
our series on the Ten Commandments…woah, I’m sorry. Where is everyone going?
Debi –
I have to work…I only put in 85 hours last week, so I’m way behind.
Beth
– I have to go visit my boy-toy! It’s our 17 ½ month anniversary!
Joe –
I have to go paint my face – the Tribe plays this afternoon, and it’s time to
get pumped!
Don’t
you think these things can wait until after church? Don’t you think it’s
important to spend some time with God? (Wait for them to go back to their
seats). Man, I’m going to have to start locking the doors. FYI, in case you
didn’t get it, that was all staged. If you really have to leave, I’m not going
to yell at you. Probably not, at least.
Well, this is our first sermon in our
ten part series on the 10 commandments, and throught these next ten weeks, we
are going to be examining these familiar commandments in a whole new light.
Now, I say they are familiar, but I think a lot of us would be hard pressed to
be able to name them all off of the top of our heads. We can remember the whole
big mac jingle and whole scenes from a movie, but it is hard to name the ten
commandments! Hopefully, by the time we are finished with this series, that
won’t be a problem anymore.
So the first of the ten commandments
was read for us already, but I want to read it to you again. Listen carefully:
Exodus 20:1-3 says this, “Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord you God
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you
shall have no other gods before me.” That’s it, that is rule number 1. You
shall have no other gods before me.
I think that there are two different
ways to interpret this rule, and I think both of them are correct, so we are
going to look at both interpretations today. The first way to interpret this
rule is to interpret it literally. Literally. You shall have no other gods
before me, that is, before God, our God, or as he was known to the Hebrews,
Yahweh. He didn’t want them worshipping any other gods, no idols, or anything
like that.
And I think that it is interesting
that he begins these rules with his claim to authority as their god. He says,
“Look, I am the Lord, I am your God, I’ve chosen you, I brought you out of
slavery in
Unfortunately, the Hebrews of that day
had a problem: they were like us. That was a problem. They were like us in the
fact that they liked to be popular. They liked to fit in. They didn’t want to
be different from those around them, they wanted to fit in. Well guess what, no
one else in the
So even though for us today it might
seem like it is easier to be Christian, to have God as our only God, back then,
it was tough! It was not socially acceptable among their peers. And through all
of this, we find out something really interesting about our God. Most of you
have probably seen the Ten Commandments movie, or you’ve read the story in the
Bible, and you know what Moses does after he receives the law, and comes down
the mountain, and he finds them worshipping a golden calf, right? And he breaks
the tablets and destroys the golden calf. So then God makes some new tablets
for them, and after doing so, we read in Exodus 34, he makes a new covenant
with them. And in this covenant he says in verse 14, “You shall worship no
other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” He says
here that his very name is “Jealous,” which was probably like a play on the
name Yahweh, because the root of the name Yahweh can mean “to crave” or “to
want.”
But that is kind of hard for me to
grasp, that God is or can be jealous. Like that doesn’t seem to be a godly
quality to have. But it really is, and it really makes sense. He’s not talking
about being jealous about having what someone else has, like Moses has a nice
robe and God is jealous because he wants it. No, that’s coveting, and that’s a
sin. The jealousy that God has is for our heart, for our time, for our love,
and for our praise. And God says he is jealous when the Hebrews worship other
gods. These other gods are fake! THEY didn’t rescue the Hebrews, THEY didn’t
provide manna, God did, Yahweh. And he is jealous for, he craves, the praises
of his people. He wants and desires to be their God, and he deserves it.
So the literal way to look at the
first commandment is to say that our God, the only God, has rescued us, and he
desires to receive our worship, our praise, and our love, so you had better not
be worshipping some other god. You shall have no other gods besides our God.
The second, and I think equally valid
way to look at this commandment, is to take it at its non-literal meaning. In
other words, read between the lines a little bit. Think about it, if our God is
a jealous God who craves our time, and our love, and our praise, then not only
should we not have any other gods besides Him, but nothing in our lives should
be placed higher than Him. And I think this is where we have the most trouble
with this commandment today, even as Christians, we break this one all the
time, and thank you to my skit participants who did such a fine job
illustrating what this looks like for us. And I have to say that I’m guilty,
too. I’m getting way better than I was, but there are times for me when other
“stuff” takes precedent over God, when God drops out of the number one slot on
my priority list.
Rick
And you know what, I understand that
it is easier said than done. Just like for the Hebrews, that’s a hard thing to
do. To actually live that rule out. To actually make God number 1 in our lives.
Because life gets in the way. I understand that I have a really sweet job where
I get to talk about Jesus all day every day, and not everyone else is called to
that. And I don’t think God is calling all of you to quit your jobs to do
nothing about worship God every day.
What I think God is calling all of us
to is to worship Him, to make Him number 1 WITHIN everything that we do. You
can live a God-focused, a God-centered life, really no matter where you are or
what you are doing. The problem with Christians making other things a priority
over God doesn’t lie in the fact that we are too busy, it lies in the fact that
we isolate God to Sunday mornings and we don’t let him be a part of the rest of
our lives. I’ll say that again in case you missed it: The problem with
Christians making other things a priority over God doesn’t lie in the fact that
we are too busy, it lies I the fact that we isolate God to Sunday mornings and
we don’t let him be a part of the rest of our lives. In fact, I might go as far
as to say this is the number 1 problem with Christianity today, which would
make sense, since it involves breaking rule number 1. Being a Sunday
morning-only Christian, leaving God at church, not letting God be a part of
everything that we do, that could be our biggest downfall.
Living in this way doesn’t involve a
huge change in what we do, though it may mean that some of our weekday
activities need cut out, because really, we do need to have time that is just
God time every week, and really, every day. If you want to have a strong
relationship with God, you’d better have some alone time with Him, if only for
a few minutes, every day. But for the most part, the things that we are doing
don’t necessarily need to change, the activities we do are usually, you know,
good things and God wants us to enjoy this world that He has made for us. What
needs to change is the way in which we do what we do. We need to let God be a
part of everything…EVERYTHING that we do!
When you are at work, how can you be
worshipping, loving, and spending time with God? I don’t know, maybe you take
your Bible to read during lunch or you start a lunch-time Bible study. Or maybe
every half hour you stop and say a quick prayer. Why not, you check your email
every 5 minutes, you can’t check in with God every 30 minutes? Maybe you make
it a point to pray for a coworker you know is having a hard time. Maybe you get
a little Bible-verse calendar for you desk. I guarantee that will be a
discussion starter with your coworkers. What you do is up to you, the point is,
God should go to work with you, otherwise, work is just that: work. And it is
taking the place of God in your life.
You can do the same sorts of things at
school or in whatever you are doing. It doesn’t matter where you are, in all
likelihood, you can take God there. And you know, if you are somewhere that you
can’t take God, it is probably a place you shouldn’t be.
Leaving God behind doesn’t always
involve where you are and what you are doing, sometimes it involves what you
have. Sometimes the things that we have take precedent over God. Money. Like
the person willing to work 85 hours a week and miss church and spending time
with God to get “just a little bit more.” Stuff. Sports.
The point is this: bottom line, no
matter what it is that you are doing in your life, God wants to be a part of
it. He craves to be a part of our lives. He is jealous for our time, love,
energy, and worship.
Sunday morning meetings with God are
great, but they aren’t enough. When He says, “You shall have no other gods
before me,” not only does He want to be our God, He wants to be our priority,
He wants to be our everything. But you have to know His motivation. It isn’t
because He’s on some egotistical power trip. It isn’t just because He’s God and
so we all have to do what He says. I don’t think that’s the attitude of God at
all.
God wants to be our God, our priority,
our everything because He is hopelessly, madly, deeply in love with all of us.
He flat-out loves you. That’s why He commands us to make Him number 1, because
he can’t stand not being with us. He hates every moment that we aren’t with
Him. And just like he said to the Hebrews, “Look what I’ve done for you! Look
at how I brought you out of slavery! Look at how much I love you!” He is still
doing that for us every day. In the beauty of nature, in the way He has ordered
the world for us. But maybe His greatest example of how much He loves us came
2000 years ago, when He sent His own son to die so that we could live with Him
forever. He did it for us so that we would know just how badly He craves us.
Pastor
Dan Metzger
Van
Buren United