No Other Gods

No Other Gods

Third after Trinity

Collect of the Day: O Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to hear us; and grant that we, to whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray, may, by thy mighty aid, be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Second in Series on the Ten Commandments

Homily Text: Exodus 20:3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Congressman Dick Armey was asked during the Monica Lewinsky scandal if he would have resigned had he been President Clinton. He replied that he would not have had the chance to resign. He would have been lying in a pool of his own blood with his wife standing over him asking, “How do I reload this thing?”  There may be a lot of marital unfaithfulness, but there are very few wives or husbands who willingly tolerate a rival. Marriage is a relationship that requires monogamy.

As with marriage so with religion. You may have one and only one God.

1. One God

The God who spoke the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai said, “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

This revelation of God was accompanied by signs of his presence in nature – thunder, lightning, a thick cloud, fire, smoke, the quaking of the mountain, and the sounding of the trumpet of heaven. All these testified to the power, majesty, holiness, and glory of God.

This God had made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that he would be their God and the God of their descendants after them and they would be his people whom he would bless.

    He was the God who appeared to Moses in the bush that burned but was not consumed, and when Moses asked his name replied, “I AM THAT I AM” – the self-existent, sovereign, never-changing God, who will always keep his promises. He was the God who watched over his people in Egypt and never forgot his people or the promise he had made to lead them back to the land he had promised Abraham. He saw their suffering and heard their cries, and at the right time performed mighty miracles of judgment on the Egyptians and of salvation for the Israelites. He was their Deliverer, Redeemer, and Savior.

Later, when it was almost time to leave Sinai, Moses asked to see the glory of the LORD. The Lord responded:

I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’… But… you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live (Exodus 33:19,20).

Then the LORD appeared and proclaimed his name which revealed his nature:

The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation (Exodus 34:6,7

This God who revealed himself to Israel at Mt. Sinai and spoke the Ten Commandments to them, has spoken his full and final word to us through Jesus Christ:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:1-3). 

1.

Thi   This God who spoke though Moses and the Prophets and finally through his Son, everywhere claims that he alone is God, and that there is no God besides him.

Moses said to the people:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one Deuteronomy 6:4).

The Lord himself said through Isaiah:

      

I am the Lord, and there is no other,

besides me there is no God…

For thus says the Lord,
who created the heavens…
who formed the earth and made it:
I am the Lord, and there is no other (Isaiah 45:6,18).

St. Paul also testifies that there is only on God:

…we know that an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” for although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist (1 Corinthians 8:4-6).

The Bible insists - and this is one reason the Bible offends many - that there is only one God, and there is no other. If you say, “The God is the Bible is my God, my Creator, who reveals himself to me in his only Son Jesus Christ,” people may think you are dumb and unenlightened. But there’s a good chance they’ll tolerate you. It’s OK, because you are just talking about your God. But if you say, “The God I worship, who makes himself known in the written Word, the Bible, and in the living Word, Jesus Christ, is the only living and true God,” then you may provoke anger. People may accuse you of being intolerant and a bigot if you claim if you say your God is the only God and all other “gods” are just so called gods because they do not exist.

It is this God who says,” I the LORD am God and besides me there is none else,” is the God who says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

2.        No Other Gods.

Israel had come out of Egypt where they had lived for 400 years. Egypt had proved fertile breeding ground for polytheism. There were a great many gods, most of them connected to nature. There were gods of storms, the sun, moon, fields, and rivers. The people were dependent on nature for their lives, so they figured there must be a god who controlled the various forces of nature, so you would be wise to worship and please these gods so they would smile on you, keep you safe, and provide for your needs. According to the prophet Ezekiel, Israel did not keep her religion pure when they were in Egypt, but went along with the polytheistic religion. So God is saying to them at the beginning of their time in the wilderness, “You shall have no other gods before me” – get rid of all those false gods.

In forty years they would arrive in the land God had promised them, Canaan. There they would face the Canaanite gods and religions. These gods too were gods of nature. You can imagine an Israelite farmer thinking to himself. “Well maybe I better hedge my bets and worship some of these local gods, since I need rain and sunshine, my seeds to germinate, and my crops to produce. So the Lord was warning them, “Now when you get to Canaan you must not worship the gods the people there worship. You shall have no other gods before me.”

The worship of other gods was a constant temptation for Israel from the time they left Egypt till the Exile. Worship of other gods inevitably corrupted only their religion but also their morals. Often relations with cult prostitutes was a part of worship. Worship of false gods reached its height in Judah during the reign of King Manasseh who promoted the worship of many pagan gods, who even put altars to false gods in the courts of the Temple dedicated to the worship of the LORD, and burned his own son as a sacrifice to a false god.

2.2        When I hear that we may worship only the one true God, I may        feel relieved, thinking, “Well, here I am in church worshiping the      true God.” And when I hear about the worship of false gods by          Israel, I may also breathe a sigh of relief, thinking, “I have never      worshiped any of those gods, and I don’t secretly practice any of      the false religions of our day.” In other words, I may think I can        put beside this commandment a check meaning, “Yes, I have            kept that one.”

But have I? Think about what a god is.

What is the most important thing in your life? Who or what takes precedence over everything else? That’s a god. There may be one, or there may be many, and there may even be a place for the Lord, but how do you rank the people and things in your life? Is this Lord we know in Jesus Christ the Lord of all?

What or who do you trust? When you are really in trouble, where do you turn? Is there someone you look to as the “fixer” in your life? Where do you turn when you are anxious, afraid, up

What or who do you serve? Jesus taught this when he said, “No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

What or who do you love? We heard the words of Jesus this morning: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind”  in which he reflects what Moses had taught Israel Deuteronomy 6:5). That is the first and great commandment. That is what it means to have no other gods before you.

Holy Communion is an opportunity for confess our sins of worshiping false gods. To seek and receive forgiveness for putting people or things in the place of God. And to reaffirm our commitment to worship God and God only through Jesus Christ, who said “No one can come unto the Father except through me.”