No Other Gods

 I'm super stoked to deliver this sermon today. I think we got all the meddlesome lesson work out of the way last week to do the preaching work here in the beauty of God's revelation. Not to imply that the previous week wasn't good; we got a lot of positive feedback about that one. But it gets so much better from here.

And you might be rightly confused regarding my excitement. If you're like me, you're looking at what we're studying and saying, 'Hey, hang on a minute. Aren't we talking about the law, Pastor RJ? In what conceivable universe is law exciting? No one's ever been like, 'Oh boy, I can't wait to review this tax code with my spouse.'

Someone asks, "You comin' to watch the game tonight?"

"No, No, I've got a hot date night planned tonight."

"Oh yeah? What are y'all doing?"

 "Dude, get a load of this: We're gonna review Section 8-B, paragraph 3. I tell you what, it's going to be a scorcher! My marriage has been downright spicy since we started talking about law!"

Joking aside, we often see laws as a bad thing, what with the prevalence of obtuse or obstinate laws, not to mention sometimes running into plain ol' unjust laws. And we might even get to the point– with how much law negatively is reflected in our world– that we might think that God hates law too. I mean, didn't He design us to live free of such things?

We'll get to that in a moment, but such a mentality points to an attitude that explicitly implies, "No one gets to tell me what I can and cannot do. I am a law unto myself. I pick and choose what is good and glorious, what is right and what is wrong. These are my playthings, as I am the ultimate arbiter of what is just and unjust, what is fair and unfair."

This, of course, is a lie we tell ourselves. As I've said before, it's virtually inconceivable that the Western sensibilities we take for granted would exist without Christianity. The only reason we have any semblance of an inbuilt moral law is because a moral lawgiver molds us. Even as belief in God fades across the West, our post-christendom continues to bear the indelible mark of Christian ethics. Do you believe it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering? Do you assume that every human life is of equal value? These aren't products of Western enlightenment; they are products of Christianity. 

One of your most potent arguments for Christianity when coming up to a secularist is this: when they try to make a moral or ethical assertion, ask them, "Why should I do that?" or "Where do you think that conviction comes from?" They will try to argue that "that's just what is natural to humans." You, however, know that it's because God puts those senses there.

Beyond the simple fact that God's laws constitute the bedrock of our post-christendom morals, even introducing the question of God must give someone pause when arguing that their law is superior to his law. I concede that we don't like this… we want to be free from troublesome laws, but there it is. 

Any argument that implies God is not a God of law finds a direct contradiction in the fact that the Bible, God's Word, is chock-full of law. The first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah, are called the Pentateuch and are otherwise known as books of law. The Old Testament is filled with laws; we've counted them, and there are 613 laws. God is a lawgiver; if you want to know Him, you must know He gives us laws. If you say, 'I want God, but I don't want His laws,' then you don't want God. You want a version of Him that is palatable to your desire to remain unchanged.

Imagine using that exact same backward logic elsewhere in life. Say you're dating someone, and that someone writes a ton of books in the historical fiction genre, you know, things like 'What if Napoleon was never exiled?' or 'What if World War I was fought with steampunk technology?' You know, fun stuff like that.

As you're dating, this person asks you what you think your favorite historical fiction novel is, and you say something along the lines of, 'Oh, I don't really read all that much, and even if I did, I wouldn't read that. I just want to know you, so why do I need to read all that stuff?'

Why do you need to read all that stuff? Because that's who they are; they are a writer of this stuff, and it's important to them. There's the disconnect; it demonstrates that you don't really want to know them; you only want to understand aspects of them. You want to move into a committed relationship with someone you only like aspects of, and consequently, you don't love them, at least not all of them.

To be clear, for healthy relationships, you don't have to like every aspect of the individual; you have to like many core aspects of the individual. But with God, it becomes a little bit more serious. If we have an innate distaste for some characteristic of God, is that an indictment of Him or us? Trick question: it doesn't matter. He's God. You're not. 

As established in lesson one, and I re-establish today, God is a God of law. God's law is glorious, given to us not to crush but to liberate us. And His law is central to who He is; He is both a lawgiver and a lover of your soul. He gives you laws because He loves you and wants you to flourish. Far from hindering your relationship with Him, the law does so many things for your relationship with Him. It shows you how much you need Him, provides guardrails so you might better enjoy life in Him, and reveals aspects of His character and the reality of His creation to you.

So, it's important to know His law, hence this 10-week series (Now an 11-week series because brevity is a foreign concept to me). But in this series, we're looking at the Ten Commandments God has given to all who love Him. Each week, we're looking at a different commandment, seeing that not only is there a corresponding passage in the New Testament, but also being reminded that God's way of living is still valid and relevant today.

 Yeah, I'm excited to teach you about His law; it's vital. And I don't teach this series because I think you're ignorant of what the law says or what it superficially means. The text says, "No other God before me." Well… what does that mean? It's a blooming mystery! What does it mean when he says, "no other Gods?" Who knows?!

Rather, our distance from the culture these laws presented themselves, alongside a lack of physical idols in our Western world, might lead us to improperly conclude that we're following this command in the mere act of existing in a non-polytheistic world (for the most part). That may be true, but  there's a difference between the deity you pledge allegiance to and the deity you are functionally allegiant to.  

I said the Pledge of Allegiance every day in middle school. Most days, I didn't believe a word coming out of my mouth. It didn't matter what I said; it mattered what I effectively believed. And what I believed was, "America hasn't earned my loyalty. Just because I was born on her soil doesn't mean she gets my allegiance." So many self-professed followers of Christ, self-professed believers in God, say they have no one else; "it's all about Jesus! There's no one else in my life but God!"

Then you observe their lives and go, "That's not true." You've got divided loyalties, my friend. "What do you mean? I don't have an idol to buddha or krishna. I'm just all about Jesus!" 

I concede, friend, that you might not burn incense to Artemis. You might not burn bulls for Baal or sacrifice babies to Molech. But you might serve an idol nonetheless. I challenge you to honestly consider whether or not there might be a little bit of a "both/and" going on in your life. As we proceed, ask yourself, "Does God have my undivided allegiance, or  Am I trying to make room in my heart for both God and idols?" To quote Peter Leithart from his book on the Ten Commandments, "Your god has little to do with whom your lips praise. It's whomever or whatever commands your heart."

It's a big question with hard heart work behind it. But it's necessary to ask. And I hope that, by the end of this message, the holy spirit will convict you of any idols in your hearts and remind you of the beauty when God is at the center where He truly belongs. I want to remind you today (if I might deliver my thesis early) that when God says "no other gods before me," he asks for your undivided allegiance. He asks that you stop trying to make room in your life for both him and your chosen idols.  

Ready or not, let's dive in. 

The Story So Far

 Let's add some necessary background context to today's text. There are 19 chapters and an entire book that takes place before you get to Exodus 20. I know, shocker. I'm just as surprised as you. And if you skip over this necessary context, you'll lose much of the beauty of what's happening here.

In the beginning, God created, and it was good. He gave humanity a perfect environment within which they could flourish and spread His goodness across the world. In that context, He gave humanity a simple law, one which was swiftly broken. Here, a divergence is made in the paths before humanity: choose God's way towards your flourishing and benefit and see God's goodness shine forth on the earth. Or choose your way and walk towards self-destructive ends.

God promises He will keep His people if they walk in His ways. What do we continually do? We screw it up. Throughout Genesis, there are stories of jacked-up families doing jacked-up stuff. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob stories of families that see good and glorious things when they follow God's ways, but when they follow their own ways, they step into self-destructive ends. God says, "Choose me, or choose idols."

An early cautionary lesson occurs in Genesis 35. Jacob and his family, though they are the children of God, find themselves torn by divided worship. In their travels, they picked up several idols and offered them worship as well. And though God doesn't explicitly command Jacob to do so, Jacob knows these idols cannot remain in his household. He says to his family and all gathered with him,

"Get rid of the foreign gods that are among you. Purify yourselves and change your clothes. We must get up and go to Bethel. I will build an altar there to the God who answered me in my day of distress. He has been with me everywhere I have gone." 

-Genesis 35:2-3

Here, we get an explicit example of a burgeoning "both/and" mentality alongside the appropriate response. Jacobs's family serves both Yahweh and these idols. You know, just in case? Of course, this is not what God wants for His people, and Jacob knows it. So, in Genesis 35:4, they gave Jacob all their foreign gods, and he buried them under an oak near a place called Shechem. (A place where these idols would commonly be worshiped) Symbolically and literally, Jacob holds a funeral for his idols. He re-pledges his complete allegiance to the one true God. 

Further into Genesis, we get to the story of Joseph. God raised him for an essential purpose. Unbeknownst to all the nations, a massive famine is on its way that is going to destroy many. Through a series of unfortunate events, Joseph finds himself, which incidentally might be the title for a sermon series on Joseph. Or perhaps "A Series of Fortunate Events?" I'll work on it. But through these events, he finds himself in the presence of the Pharaoh, the most powerful man in one of the most powerful countries. The Pharaoh has been having terrible dreams, so he asks the man of God, "What does this mean?" The man of God correctly interprets the dream.

He tells the Pharaoh, "Yo, Pharaoh, your fiscal prosperity is looking mad tight right now." Pretty sure that's the direct quote. He says, "The financial market is up, the stock market is up, the housing prices are nice, your portfolio is fire." Okay, I'll stop; I know it's cringeworthy. But Joseph warns him that there is a fiscal cliff on the horizon, that famine is coming, and that you will be destroyed if you don't properly prepare. 

So what does Pharaoh do? Pharaoh listens to the man of God. He appoints him as his second-in-command, Egypt's second most powerful man. True enough, after years of prosperity, famine comes, and Egypt thrives while many other nations wither. In this context, the Israelites find themselves brought under God's protective hand through Pharaoh and saved once again by God's providence.

Years pass, generations after generations, in Egypt. A new Pharaoh steps up to the throne, sees the Hebrews in his land as a threat, and enslaves them. The hand of protection now becomes a hand of oppression. This is obviously not what God wants for His people.

So what does He do? He raises up another man of God, a man with a speech impediment - interestingly enough, that would be nice to get into - Moses. Moses is brought before the Pharaoh. He says, "Let my people go." Pharaoh replies, "No." "Let my people go?" "No." And every time this rigmarole transpires, God sends a plague upon Egypt, demonstrating His power is superior to the other false gods that the Egyptians worship.

Soon enough, the plagues become unbearable, but Pharaoh won't relent. So God does one last plague, the most terrible of all. The death of every firstborn in Egypt. The Israelites are only protected from this plague when God says, "Take a lamb, kill it, and paint its blood over your doors so that the angel may pass over you." That's how we get Passover, demonstrating an echo of the sacrifice of Christ, which is to come for God's people so they might live. But it also, once again, illustrates the theme that has been repeated over and over again throughout Genesis and the beginning of Exodus: follow in God's way and flourish, go against His way, and perish.

After this tenth and final brutal plague, Pharaoh relents and lets God's people go. It's glorious, there's much celebration, and they cross the Red Sea. Initially, the people are jubilant, but they quickly start leaning into old rebellious patterns, as we will soon see. A mere fifty days after the Exodus, God sees that it's prudent to give his people these ten words.

All of that context is important. If you don't know what happens in Exodus, for the previous 19 chapters of Genesis, you will have difficulty reading the Ten Commandments. And yes, I expect you to read those on your own time. You can't fully appreciate God's law until you fully understand what it is doing for His people.

God gives people laws not to constrain them but to liberate them from their mentality in Egypt. They had sat under Egyptian polytheistic religion for some 430 years. That's 430 years of polytheistic religion, 430 years over a completely anti-God culture, and 430 years under a system that said Pharaoh's word is law. And God wants to remind His people of something: "I give you my law because I love you." Pharaoh and his law they're not loving. They're not life-giving. My law is loving, and it is very much that which will give you life. Pharaoh's law says, "Do this, or I will crush you." My law says, "Do this because I don't want to see you crush yourselves."

If you want the big idea behind God's laws, whether they're in the Old Testament, the New Testament, or for our purposes today, they are this: God's purpose for the law is not that you would be free and then just put on some brand new shackles - shackles of legalism, shackles of oppression, shackles of anxious law-keeping so that you might acquire your own salvation. That's not what the law is for. The law ensures that  people who have been set free continue to live free. 

Is Your Heart Still in Egypt?

You can most certainly be set free by Christ yet not live in the freedom of Christ. It's not hard. Christians do it every day. Some, under the sound of my voice, might be doing it right now. God knew His people well. God knows us well. Well enough to know that just because He brought them out of Egypt does not mean that they've left Egypt behind in their hearts.

Some of you today, under the sound of my voice, maybe you have been pulled out of slavery to your sin. Perhaps you've been liberated from the shackles of your iniquity. And yet, you don't live as if that was the case. You still carry with you an Egypt mentality. And you go on as if this is an okay way for God's people to live.

God says, "I've delivered you from addiction. And yet you go crawling back." God says, "I've delivered you from holding yourself up to the standards of others rather than living free in the knowledge that I am the only judge that matters, and I've already called you mine." And while you've been liberated in that sense, you still go back and use others as the measuring stick in your life. You've set up counterfeit idols as your ultimate judge: Perhaps a perfectionist father, a hypocritical mother, an unpleasant sibling, or a difficult spouse. You are setting them up as the standard of whether or not you have been made righteous in the eyes of the Lord when none of these are glorious enough or good enough to be your ultimate judge. And yet, you still live as if they were.

"I have set you free from your bonds." Says the Lord, "Why do you still live as if you were in shackles?" That's what we do when we set up others as our judges or seek salvation in anything but Christ. When we do things to atone or make penance for who we used to be, though Christ has already paid it all. We set ourselves up by the standards and laws of other people when God is the ultimate standard, and God is the lawgiver. You've got to understand God is the one who blesses. God is the one who curses. God is the one who bears your sins. God is the one who speaks truth. God is the one who is worthy of all authority.

And so, if you go forward, having heard this gospel, having been freed by this gospel Savior, and yet you live as if you were subject to the judgment of other judges or that salvation is found in other saviors, that your hope that you can be washed clean of your sins is found anywhere but in Christ alone, maybe your heart is still in Egypt. Maybe you've been set free, but you don't live free. 

God knows what's coming for His people. God knows that literally immediately after giving them His laws, His words, and the revelation of who He is and who they are, they will turn to idol worship. The golden calf is literally right around the corner. He knows that they will suffer divided loyalties and divided allegiance time and time again. 

It need not be this way, not for them and not for you. You need not suffer the same consequences. You need not fall into the same patterns. You need not falter under the weight of a heart that tries and fails to make room for both God and your idols. Furthermore, God will not abide a both/and heart in those who are His. If you love Him, why would you try to fit both him and something else in your heart? Imagine doing that with your spouse. "Oh baby, I've got room in my life for both you and this other person who now lives with us. I've got room in my heart for both you and that other spouse." How do you think your spouse will respond? "You better make room for both them and the sidewalk 'cause you're not staying here tonight."

God reveals himself to us so that we don't suffer divided allegiances. Because of Him, we can see our lives singularly focused on Him and Him alone to His glory and our flourishing.

"Well, how do we do that Pastor RJ?" I'll tell you. It begins with this first revelation.

"I Am. You're Not"

We open up to the very first words:  "I am." "I am the Lord." This self-designation of Yahweh is repeated throughout Scripture over 164 times and throughout 161 verses. Who is God? "I am." "I am who I am," as He says in Exodus 3:14. From gotquestions.org, the statement indicates "self-sufficiency, self-existence, and immediate presence. God's existence is not contingent upon anyone else. His plans are not contingent upon any circumstances. He promises He will be what He will be; that is, He will be the eternally constant God. He stands, ever-present and unchangeable, completely sufficient in Himself to do what He wills to do and to accomplish what He wills to accomplish. When God identified Himself as I AM WHO I AM, He stated that, no matter when or where, He is there."

While idols are limited by time and space, while they change and fade over time, they ironically rely on those who worship them for their sustaining presence; our God requires none of these things. "I am," He says. "I am the only self-sufficient one. I am the only eternal constant. I am the only ever-present one. None other can make this claim." I contend that you will never understand the beauty of God's commands, of His Ten Words to His people if you do not understand this right here: "I am the Lord, your God. I am the one who brought you out of Egypt." 

It's not enough that God would just tell us to do something. He's not like that. Unjust lawgivers do that. They force you to do something without any revelation of what it does for your life, and you instinctively push back a little. Our God is gracious and knowing that you can't just will your way into putting God first in your life. You need His help, and He has provided it in a powerfully motivating way by rescuing us.

"I am the Lord, your God. I brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." So, the first thing He does is remind His people who He is and what He has done. He gives them a picture of the gospel. We were once enslaved to our sins, to our passions, to our worldly desires, to our selfish desires. We were once enslaved to the powers of the world, and nothing, not even the law, could save us. But our God, mighty and rich in mercy (Ephesians 2:4), entered our world, took our burden, and set us free. He rescued us from the slavery of sin, just as He rescued the Jews from their slavery to the Egyptians, and He's saying, "I've done this for you. So here is what you should do in return. You're not giving me something, for I don't need anything from you. This is for your benefit. Don't put any other gods before me. Let me be first in your life. I've set you free, so don't go and re-enslave yourselves to something or someone else. Just follow me. I didn't set you free so you'd refuse to live free."

Remember Egypt. Remember when I showed my might in the ten plagues, toppling all those rival idols. Remember how I saved you from Pharoah and brought you across the Red Sea. Remember how time and time again I've come through for you. I am God; there is no other. 

 God wants us to place Him first in our lives before anyone or anything else and to love Him more than anything else. "I am the Lord, your God, and I brought you out of slavery. There are no other gods aside from me." How we wish it weren't so, by how often we set up other gods in our hearts. How many people claim freedom but are truthfully enslaved? Following false teachers, promised freedom, but instead find ourselves slaves of corruption? (2 Peter 2:19) 

Boy howdy, just look at America, ostensibly the land of the free, but arguably the most enslaved you've ever seen? And we like to sanitize the language and say we're not enslaved. We're addicted. We just live a little vicariously. We're just a little mentally under the weather. We're not enslaved. Really? You could argue that, or you could admit that you need the boost to sleep, or you could admit you need the porn to feel something, or you could concede that you need the gossip to feel better about your own disjointed home life. You could argue around the concept with people all the time. "I'm not enslaved. I have no master." Then why don't you live free?

 It's funny how people will say they would never choose God because they don't want to bow to any king, yet they'll bow at many self-prescribed altars, set up idols for themselves in their hearts, and follow their own hearts.

Rather than "thus saith the Lord," post-christendom has replaced that wise mindset with the mindless cultural imperative "Follow your heart." Follow my heart? Are you kidding? Have you met my heart? Cause' I have, and let me tell you, no one should follow that guy. (Top 10 things not to say if you want people to follow you as a leader...) You go to the bookstore, and you see the prominent section titled self-what? Self-help. That should make you laugh. The last person that's qualified to give you advice is you. Can I tell you something? Your heart is an echo chamber, telling itself the lies it wants to hear and only internalizing truths it wants to believe. You're the judge, you're the king, you're the master. It's not self-help. It's self-worship. And it's killing us.

Dr. Thaddeus Williams put it like this in an article titled 5 Reasons Not to Follow Your Heart:

"Under the trendy orthodoxy of expressive individualism, life is no longer about bringing our inner selves into the tempo and key of beauty, goodness, and truth. It's about finding our own inner tune, marching to our own beat, and conducting those around us to play along with our anthems of autonomy…Validating our every feeling seems exhilarating—at first. But we end up trapped inside our own mental constructs. We become what David Foster Wallace called "lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation." Looking inside our hearts doesn't give us limitless freedom but a bad case of claustrophobia… Our hearts are dull, dithering, divided, depraved and delusional."

Anytime you set up an idol in your heart, you set up a self-worship. For what is an idol but an idealized version of yourself? If you idolize money, your ideal version of yourself is a rich man. If you idolize your job, your idealized version of yourself is a successful career person. You can even set up an idol and think you're worshiping Jesus. But if it's a Jesus incapable of contradicting you, is it actually Jesus?

Do you have idols? Are you tearing your heart asunder trying to make room for both God and yourself? Are you torn between having the mind of Christ and trying to make your thoughts his thoughts? The remedy is presented to us in all caps, bold, highlighted, and underscored letters. The first revelation that will help you live free is this:

 "I am the Lord. You are not."

Our culture sets up its own laws, hailed as tolerant or progressive. Laws that, when misaligned with God, equate to nothing. You won't find freedom in deciding what is right and wrong for yourselves. You won't find it trying to live in a way you consider best for yourselves. Freedom is found in God alone. Freedom is found in reminding ourselves of this one main thing: "I am the Lord. You are not."

Every time you set up kingdoms apart from God, they will crumble. Every time you wrest the culture away from God, it's poorer for it. America is in dire straits. Why? Because we think we can do this without God. Oh, we can take care of racism without God. Oh, we can decide that we don't need marriage as designed by God. Oh, we can construct our identity without God. 

Those who claim to follow Christ aren't exempt friends. "I can figure out my finances without the Lord. I can sort out my marriage troubles without God. I can kick this habit without God. I'm strong enough. I'm smart enough. I can help myself." God's single greatest revelation to his people demolishes all such egotistical notions. "I am God. You are not." That's the first and greatest revelation that helps us live free.

God At The Center, Counterfeit Gods Demolished

The second revelation that helps us live free is this:  God belongs at the center of all things. The ten words are divided into two tables, the first with four commandments teaching us how to live in relation to God, and the second with six commandments teaching us how to live in relation to our neighbor, echoing the glorious summation of God's words which Jesus says in Mark 12:28-31.

If you could imagine, for just a moment, living in Israel during the time of Jesus, what would that look like? It's the question we always ask in study groups. If you could meet one Bible character, who would it be? Well, how are you not going to say Jesus?

Imagine sitting there, listening to Jesus teach and answer questions. He's right there, and he's so accessible. You can ask him anything you want. What do you ask him? And straight out of what we read today in Mark 12, someone asks a particular question in their moment of accessibility with the Son of God, and he answers so clearly: "Which commandment is most important of all?" Jesus says, "Love God and love others. There is no other commandment greater than these."

Jesus is merely summarizing the Ten Commandments. He's not doing away with them. He's transposing them, like you do with music. The key might change, but the song remains. In doing this, he says, "What is the most primary, the utmost importance? What is the most preeminent command? 'You shall have no other gods before me.' I am the Lord, your God. I brought you out of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me."

Every other God is a counterfeit. If you put them before me, you display that something in your life doesn't put me, the Lord, at the center. And we have more counterfeit gods in our lives than we care to admit freely. 

"Pastor RJ, how do I know I have an idol in my heart? How do I recognize I'm trying to make room in my life for both God and a counterfeit?" Well, we start with a simple self-evaluation. Tim Keller once said it this way in his fantastic book "Counterfeit Gods," a book I can't recommend enough:  "An idol is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give, anything that is so central and essential to your life that should you lose it, your life would hardly feel worth living."

Is there anything in your life like that? Simple self-evaluation: Look at the thing and ask, "Is God allowed to take this from me?" Even good things can become idols if God cannot be Lord over them. Can God take away that relationship? Can God take away that job? Can God take away that family member? (We're just talking, guys, I can't say what's going on in your life.) Can God take away that vice? Can God take away that virtue? Yes, even virtues can become idols when they aren't submitting to the Lord. You can think you're being virtuous, but you might be serving an idol.

We don't like this self-evaluation because we want to operate under the delusion that we follow the Lord perfectly. We're saved, out of Egypt, and now we'll never have problems again, right? The Lord knows better. So he reminds us, "no other gods." God doesn't want to play a small role in your little world. He wants to reveal to you that He's the center. The question is, is He?

When you get up in the morning, what's the first thing you do? When you get home from a long day at work, what do you do to unwind? What is your budget glorifying? What does your schedule orbit around? Who do you run to when you're in need? The first commandment leads us to put God first in everything. When we put God first, we realize all we're doing is saying yes to God before we say yes to anyone or anything else, which includes ourselves.

To loosely quote the Heidelberg Catechism, God requires "that I rightly know the only true God, trust Him alone, and look to God for every good thing, humbly and patiently, and love and fear God with all my heart. In short, that I give up anything rather than go against God's will in any way."  The foremost evidence of God being first in your life is displayed in your obedience to the Word. "This is the love of God: that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome (1 John 5:3)." 

If you want to summarize the entire law into commands: love God, love people. Oh, that's absolutely fine, but you must understand the gravity of what you're saying. When you say "love God," that means God comes first, and all other idols must (not just be put second, which would be too easy) but be wholly and utterly demolished so that you might live in His life. There's not enough room in your heart for both God and your idols. To quote Jesus in Matthew 6:24, "No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other." Mark my words: if your loyalties are currently torn between God and an idol, if you cannot let go of that addiction, that relationship, that whatever it is, your heart will be torn apart. You will end up hating your idol or hating God. Better to swear fealty to one or the other before it kills you. Destroy your idols, or they will destroy you.

Paul describes several such idols in Colossians 3:5–10: "Therefore, put to death what belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, God's wrath is coming upon the disobedient, and you once walked in these things when you were living in them. But now, put away all the following: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and filthy language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self. You are being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator."

"Hey! Wait a minute!" You might say. "I've got some things on that list in my heart. I'm struggling with that!" Congrats. You've detected an idol. Put it to death, or it will kill you. God is doing us the greatest service in saying, "Kill the other Gods your heart desires." He knows, should we continue to allow them in our lives, they will do irreparable damage.

Jesus's death paid the consequences of your sin. Therefore, you are free to follow God's words, not out of obligation or fear of punishment, but out of love. You're no longer under the law to gain your righteousness from it; the law is now in your hearts as a part of you because you love God and want to obey Him. He has freed you so that you can stay free.

God Is Your Loving Father

The third revelation, though not explicitly in the text, is nonetheless pertinent. God makes a way where there seems to be no way for his children. In this, the text reminds us that he is our good and loving Father.  1 John 3:1 says, "See what great love the Father has given us that we should be called God's children — and we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it didn't know him."

We suffer divided allegiances in our hearts because we forget the love of our heavenly Father. I've mentioned this outside of sermons, but this is probably the first time I will ever say it from the point of preaching about it. A lot of people, and before you start jotting this down, make a mental note that this is entirely from my observation and could be completely erroneous. I'm open to it being wrong, but here we go.

I've observed that a lot of people that take issue with God and His commands, that hate God, hate His people, and hate His commands; I've noticed that it's because God is Father, and their own fathers failed them in some way growing up. I won't say this is everyone, but I've certainly noticed a pattern of people with father wounds directly correlating with people who take issue with God the Father. If your father is the only father figure you've witnessed, and they were absent, passive, aggressive, abusive, whatever, what does that tell you about God? None of that is who God is, but many people see their fathers as models for God, meaning many have horribly warped ideas of who God is.

 God is so much better than even the best earthly Father. But we look at rules that God establishes for us, and the only thing we have to compare them to is the rules we were placed under growing up ourselves. Was there ever a specific rule in your house growing up that you had a hard time obeying? Maybe it was difficult to obey because your parents would never really explain the mentality behind the rule. They would just say, "Shut up and listen." Maybe the consequences for disobeying were so severe that you just learned that rules were built there to keep you compliant and under the thumb of those you grew up under rather than the revelation that they're there to support you thriving, flourishing, protected, and keep you safe.

I was reminded of that when I found myself playing video games this past week. Growing up in my house, you were only allowed one hour of video games daily. I distinctly remember there was a little egg timer that my mom set up in the kitchen. Yet, you had to start the timer, and when that timer beeped, you could hear my mother's voice from down the hall saying, "You better be off that game now." I remember it so clearly. I also remember my brothers and I would restart the egg timer when we knew she was out of earshot so we could go as long as we wanted to.

But we never understood that rule; we always thought it was obscenely limiting. You can't get much done in only 60 minutes of game time. Whether explicitly or implicitly, the lesson was made clear in that household. Here in this house, we don't tolerate laziness. Fun and relaxation are earned, not demanded. We won't see our kids become zombies in front of screens.

I was reminded of that rule because I thought it was so absurd when I was a kid. But this past Monday, I thought, "Let me play some video games for my day off, for my day of relaxation." Baldur's Gate 3 just came out, and I'm getting back into D&D and managing tabletop role-playing games (as if I needed another mark against me for my obscene nerdiness). I thought, "Baldur's Gate 3, I'm going to spend a couple of hours doing this, then I'm going to go and study a little bit," and so on. I sat down at the TV around 10 in the morning. "Just a few hours," I said.

Well, wouldn't you know it, as if by some witchcraft, by forces beyond human understanding, time fast-forwarded. I swear to you, only minutes passed, but all of a sudden, I saw Laura walking through the front door. And I say, "You're home early." She goes, "I'm not at all." I look at the clock, and it now reads 8:30 p.m. I spent all day on that couch, as productive as… something wildly unproductive.

Was it fun? Sure. Did I get some enjoyment out of it? Absolutely. But I started to remember my family's house rule, and I had a sudden epiphany about why that rule was so meaningful. I got jack all done that Monday, and I didn't have a restful day as a result. It's not to say that relaxation and rejuvenation are unimportant to Christians. We'll talk about that when we get to discussing the command surrounding the Sabbath. It's to say that behind every rule is a revelation. Behind every one of God's rules is a revelation of who He is and what He wants for His people. Just as behind my parents' rule was a revelation of who they were and what they wanted for me. And I finally realized we don't like God's rules because we attribute them often to some of our parents' rules—some of those arbitrary rules, some of those rules that we don't understand, some of those rules that we look back on and say, "That actually was kind of unjust; that kind of was unfair."

As I implied before, some of us bore the brunt of angry fathers. Some of you were used to fathers you feared, fathers who were indifferent, fathers who were passive, fathers who were absent, and you attribute those things to God. So, how could His rules be good? Aren't our father's models for God? If so, what do my father's actions say about my heavenly Father? And some of you had loving families, and good for you. I'm glad you grew up without damage; you know, pray for the rest of us.

My point is that you don't need to put God in a box of your design to make Him palatable to yourself; Too cut up the pages of your bible and distort the revelation of who God is until it becomes precisely whatever you desire. You need a revelation of who God is and how much He loves you, that He is good, and that His plans for you are motivated by His perfect love. And if you get that, you can find the faith to obey, even when it's challenging to do so.

There is but one pathway to avoid putting other gods before the one true God: to love Him. It's the way to keep all God's commands. As we see in John 14:15, Jesus said, "If you love Me, you will keep My commands." Jesus understood that love for the Lord was paramount in having no one and nothing else before him; this is why He framed His answer the way He did. The question is, how can you love God enough to put Him first? You have to see God in what He has done for you first. You have to see the good, kind, just, loving Father who just wants you to thrive and flourish and who wants to see the best for you. That's what His rules do; that's what His words are for.

If you've got a father wound in your heart, He wants to heal that. If you've got an issue with His law, the problem is not with the law; the problem is that there is something in your heart that you want to cling to more than you want to cling to God. And the best way to do that is to truly see God and what He has done for you by looking at Jesus on the cross. Jesus, who Colossians 1:15 describes as the visible image of the invisible God.

If you've ever wondered if God loves you, whether or not His words are there to guide and direct you towards good paths, look to Jesus on the cross. If you ever wonder whether or not God still wants to be in a relationship with you, you just have to look at what Jesus went through so you could be together. If you wonder if you're accepted as you are, look to Jesus on the cross, what He said: "It is finished." Nothing more needs to be done. If you're wondering how to respond to Jesus's words about following Him, it's simply this; "If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me" (Luke 9:23).

When you truly seek God in Christ, you will follow Him by putting Him first above all other things. That's what God's been saying since the very beginning. See, if you need to get the most substantial revelation of what this first word from the Lord says to you, it's this: God says, "You shall not have any gods before Me. Because none of them will love you like I love you."

Here, He is not clamping down on your freedom; He's freeing you from an anxious, aimless, pathetic existence. He's freeing you from the thousands of idols vying for your attention and clamoring for the passions in your heart. These idols promise all the world's pleasures but end up being unfulfilling, unloving, and unforgiving mute idols—things you will give your time, money, and affection, and you will get only death and destruction in return. All of these things stand in contrast to who our God is, who our Father is in heaven, who our Father is in our hearts, our Father who loves us, our Father who leads us out of Egypt into the promised land, our Father who gives us Christ, the miracle of Himself among us, come to die for the sins of men.

This is our God, and He says, "You shall have no other gods before Me." And that's not a pitiful revelation, not a pitiful request. "Oh, good sir, I know you have so many choices, but thanks for choosing Me as your God of choice. Thanks for going with Me. I know you could have gone with all these other options. I'm glad you could give Me just a little bit of your attention, just a little morsel, a little crumb of your affection; that makes Me happy." No, that's not what He's doing; that's not what He's saying. He's extending you mercy; He's giving you the plain, honest, brutal truth: There is no other God.

Go on, spend your whole life searching, spend all your days flitting between divided allegiances, divided attention, expend your entire life with an uncentered heart and an unfocused mind. "Or," God seems to say, "Or you could spend your life in My light, in My life, and in My liberty." 

This one singular commandment serves as a covering for every other commandment. If only we were to get this one thing right, everything else in our lives would fall into place. My job would have God at the center. My marriage would have God at the center. If God were my everything, if I never purposefully strayed from his love and law, I'd never break his commands. But this is rarely the case, as we want both God and our idols. 

I challenge you, church, to evaluate your heart. Remember God your Father, God who brought you out of iniquity, God who loves you, and God who gives his good and just law to you. Ask yourself if there are idols you refuse to put to death, and perhaps wonder why you refuse to do so.

Choose today who your God is. It should be simple, as the choice is between the one true God and one thousand counterfeits. I pray that those under the sound of my voice would choose Him. It's truly the best way.