Exodus 20: 3
Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me 

But this morning I want to speak about the first of these ten commandments. (By the way if you did not memorize them when you were a child, by all means do so during this next year. They are fairly simple to memorize in their short, one sentence form if you notice their arrangement into two tables of the law and then the order within each list of 5. When I quote the commandments I deliberately use the archaic pronoun, for looking at the RSV, one would never, discover that it is "THOU shalt not," and not "you all shall not." This is clear from the Hebrew original which, unlike modern English, has both a singular and a plural in the second person). They are addressed to the believer personally. And also take note that I have quoted the first commandment as "Thou shalt have no other gods BESIDES me." The "before me" of the KJV might suggest in modern English that they could have lesser gods as long as they were not held in higher esteem than Jehovah. Nothing could be further than the truth. 

I. NOW, FIRST PUT THE COMMANDMENT IN PERSPECTIVE. 

1. Take note that these commandments were two "tables" of the law (according to Deuteronomy 5) and these were arranged in a very sensible arrangement. The first 5 speak about man's relationship to God. The second 5 speak about his relationship to his fellow man. And in each category the commandments proceed from the utmost weightiness to the least. Thus, this commandment for today is supremely important, and, in a way, encompasses all the other 4 of the first table. 

2. It is very related to the second commandment, which forbids not only other gods but the use of idols excused as an aid to visualizing Jehovah -- a trick that has always been used to entrap believers into idolatry -- but also condemns, in principle, man-made forms of worship and of man-made conceptions about God. But I will treat that sometime in the future. 

3. Remember that these 10 commandments are not like the liturgical laws or the dietary laws which were temporary and for the Jews before the time of Christ only. Both our Lord and the Apostle Paul treated them as foundational of all morality and incumbent upon God's people forever. Matthew 22: 38 (and its parallel Mark 12), and Romans 13: 8, for example, strongly imply this. So does their treatment in the O.T. where they were written on stone and enshrined in the ark of the Covenant in the Tabernacle. 

Now, these 10 commandments are foundational. They ought to be taught to our children and ought to be in the forefront of our minds. They ought to be an instruction to us in an age where it is often believed that to lay down negative commandments is destructive of human personality and dignity. These were not the 10 suggestions or the 10 rules for a happy life but the 10 Commandments and 9 of them were phrased in the negative. 

1. In the ancient world this commandment was primarily taken up with false gods. It was the age of idolatry on every frontier of Israel and in the idolatrous nations beyond them, and beyond even those nations going out to the ends of the earth. 

2. And idolatry in ancient times was no mere peccadillo that people engaged in for one hour a week like the nominal Christian sees as his practice of Christianity. It was whole-life, full-time, whole-culture idolatry, corrupting everyone and every thing that it touched and bringing sorrow and misery in its path. And for generations it was a trap to Israel and for every generation up till the Babylonian Captivity when they learned their lesson about literal idolatry which the came to hate. But they began 25 centuries of less dramatic, defacto idolatry. 

In those ancient times the pattern was always that the idolatrous nations became attractive to the Israelites and the Israelites one way after another began to imitate them and they were slowly drawn into, first, fairly harmless cultural things that sprang out of an idolatrous culture and, then, into the idol-associated things and then into the full-fledged religious idolatry that debased them and made them a curse instead of a blessing and devastated their walk with the Lord. 

Learn a lesson from this because it is still true. We will see this in the modern equivalent of idolatry. And the prevailing culture can become a slippery slope that gradually, almost imperceptibly guides us into first its culture, then into its morality and finally into its worship and conception of God. You and I are vulnerable. How has it affected your life in terms of the first commandment? 

3. But going back to the "evolution" of religion in ancient times: By the time of the N.T., idolatry was not so gross as it was in the ancient world of 1400 B.C. but it was idolatry just the same. For many people the idolatry became the legalistic practice of religious ceremony that had a thin resemblance to the ancient religion but was far from it in the conception of God and in the overlaying religious ceremony. By this time the "idol", if you want to call it that, became the tradition and the ordinances and the religious ceremony itself. And the Gentiles became more sophisticated in their idolatry also. Paul noted in Ephesians 5: 5 that a covetous man is, after all, an idolater. 

In a similar passage in Colossians 3: 5 he repeats himself, and there associates other sins with covetousness, we wonder if he didn't think they too were versions of defacto idolatry. Idolatry is, after all, the things that take the place of God in the life of the individual, the things he gives his life to: immorality, lust, evil desire, which, Paul says, "in which you once walked when you LIVED in them." Such things, when one "LIVES in them," are just as idolatrous as covetousness or as bowing down before an idol, for that matter. 

Any sin or any neutral thing can become an idol when it begins to compete with God for our affections. A covetous man has made a god out of his possessions (or would-be possessions). The same can be said with regard to immorality, lust, evil desire, which Paul mentions in that Colossians 3 passage. But things that are innocent in themselves can too. One's profession, one's family, one's hobby, one's entertainment, vacations can become a god that competes with Jehovah. 

For many modern people Science may be their god because they believe that "God" is merely an abstract, convenient concept and all things that exist , exist by a miraculous accident -- really a chain of accidents starting in a compact ball of matter that exploded, that created entropy in existence and it eventually evolved into what we now see and even into ourselves. Such persons are idolaters of the first order because they give the credit for the whole creation to an inanimate, accidental process rather than to God the Father Almighty who made the heavens and the earth and all things that are in them. 

And they are idolatrous in that they think that man's science and care taking of the earth are going to lead to age-long of life on the planet instead of seeing the real Upholder of all things, viz. the creative, sustaining word of God that upholds all things by the word of the power of the Second Person. They are furthermore idolaters because they have turned the Christian religion into an instrument of glorifying mankind and into an instrument for social welfare and education. 

1. We live in the midst of an idolatrous culture. Many of our neighbors and best citizens are blatant idolaters. They have been our teachers and people who we admire for many good qualities. Some of them are members and even regular attendants of the establishment churches where a "high priest" and their fellow worshippers reinforce their idolatry by eloquent discourse on the one hand and by lay example, on the other. 

Many of these idolaters have given themselves to pleasure, serial matrimony, obsession with possessions and prestige, unbridled sexual pleasure, illicit drugs, legalized extortion and larceny, dishonesty and perjury. And their giving themselves to these things brings them under the wrath of God --- even those they may be highly respected members of that society. God will say to them that they are idolaters and that his commandment was given long ago (and in its more obvious forms is even built into the American consciousness of morality). His commandment is and every will be "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." 

2. But consider that the commandment doesn't just condemn their idolatry in these subtle forms as it would condemn them if they worshipped metal or stone idols on their living room mantles. For our passage strongly implies not only that they must resist idolatry but that they should give themselves to the gracious, magnificent and loving God who is creator and sustained of all things---who decrees that all these celestial bodies work in harmony and that spring time and harvest and summer and winter, and moisture and the whole balance of nature will continue on this small planet as long as time shall last. They are to recognize him who is God over all creation and serve him in glad surrender who is the creator, sustainer and owner of all things -- not only the ground that we walk on and the things that we consider our possessions but of our very lives an souls. "Thou shalt have no OTHER gods besides me." I am the God who is to be worshipped; I am the potential delight of you life, the security for your soul, the meaning of life both here and in t he world to come; the only investment that really counts; the only reason for living. 

3. As I say, these people who are idolaters -- not literal idol worshippers, understand -- are all around us. And in the end of the 20th century they are crowding in -- crushing us on every side with their defacto idolatry. And it is inescapable that we have more of a tendency to this defacto idolatry than any other generation of Americans has had. And we feel ourselves caught up -- almost unconsciously -- in their defacto idolatry. And God says to us as he says to them, "Thou shalt have no other gods besides me." 

Does God speak to you in your situation in this? Does he speak to a "room" in your heart where you have an idol hidden away that no one knows about? Does he speak to you about the implied positive side of the commandment that you should give yourself wholeheartedly to him in your service, in your security, in your gifts and talents, in your delights and pleasures, in your time and service, in your possessions? 

Does he speak to you in this? Does he say: "Little child of mine, guard yourself against idolatry." Does he say to you: "Give yourself to me every day as a sacrifice offered up to the God of Creation who in the Second Person of the Godhead died for yours ins and in his third person has come to you to make these spiritual things real and to link you with God?" 

Does he, at least, speak to you about the surrounding idolatry that crushes in on you continually appealing to you to be like your neighbor instead of being like God's pattern that you see in the Bible and in the truly sanctified Christian people who are a part of his community here and in other places? 

And I must add for those with an over-tender conscience who are likely to use this neurotically: If I belong to Christ -- have taken him as my Savior -- I examine my life under the searchlight of his Word, confess my sins and then go on and, by God's grace, do better. It is the wrong use of the Word, I think, to let our consciences be burdened with what even our own minds are not sure of. Hebrews says we are judicially freed from an evil conscience. 

We are freed by the judicial imputation of Christ's righteousness and by his atonement granted to us in our justification. Thank God that we stand as perfectly righteous in his sight as our Judge. Take this from God's word and seriously apply it to your life: "Thou shalt have no other gods besides me."