No Other Gods

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3)

          There was a time, when I was a little boy in Sunday School, that I thought I had found a passage in Scripture that did not pertain to me. We were studying the Decalogue, and of course when one studies the First Commandment he necessarily must examine God’s prohibition of idolatry among His people.

          As I flipped through the Old Testament, I read of little statues and bronze, handcrafted idols the people worshipped – and I breathed a sigh of relief. As far as I knew, I didn’t have any bronze statues in my bedroom, and I certainly didn’t bow down to anything of the sort. Whew – I was off the hook!

          Or so I thought.

          As I matured and learned that an idol is anything that takes the place the triune God alone deserves, I realized I wasn’t exempted from the First Commandment. In fact, this commandment was foundational to life and to theology, and whenever I cared more about football than I did about Christ, I was breaking God’s holy law.

          Surely I am not alone. The history of God’s people, of you and of me, is one of struggling with idol-worship – whether the idol of Baal or the idol of a big house or the idol of basketball.

          Yet the path to intimacy with the living God begins with clearing out the idols of your heart.

This morning we note first that God alone is worthy of your worship; but second, you tend to worship worthless idols instead of Him; and third, only daily repentance from idolatry will enable you to give the one, true Creator and Redeemer the glory that is due His Name alone.

This commandment teaches you and me first that God alone – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is worthy of our worship in heart and life.

The clear and consonant testimony of God’s Word is that the Lord is God alone: thus you and I may have no other gods except Him. He alone created all things by the Word of His power, and He alone redeemed His saints through the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Psalms 115 and 135 in particular emphasize that you and I have life in none other save the Lord, so we owe our worship to none other save the Lord.

The God who created all things and who reveals Himself in Scripture is the only true God. This is Christ’s teaching concerning himself in St. John 17:3 as he speaks of revealing the “only true God;” St. Paul in Romans 1 and St. John in 1 John 5:19-21 likewise affirm that the triune God is the only genuine and real God. St. John writes that the Lord Jesus has given us an understanding about Christ being the Truth and the One who unites us to the true God, even as the whole God-less world lies in darkness. All other objects of human worship are false gods and life-stealers.

The Lord God is jealous for your worship, so it is no wonder the prohibition against having any other object of worship comes first in the Decalogue. The Lord alone is worthy of your worship, and if you don’t know Him as the true God and your God, you cannot make sense of the world around you or of the life to come.

This commandment, therefore, is primary, foundational and unbending in its demands. You may worship none other than the only One worthy of your heart, life and service: the triune God.

The reality, however, is that you and I as sinners naturally worship false gods – non-gods – in the place of our Lord. This wicked trait is so prevalent among us humans that the Reformer John Calvin once memorably asserted that the human mind is nothing but an “idol factory.”

This truth means that you must admit your proclivity to manufacture and to worship false gods, which are the product of a fallen mind. St. Paul writes in the eighth chapter of his letter to the Romans that the fleshly, “natural” human mind is hostile to God; it cannot subject itself to the law (or Word) of God. It is no surprise, then, that he argues in Romans 1 that instead of worshipping the God who so clearly reveals Himself in the creation, you and I subvert the truth and change the glory of the incorruptible God into images of created, corruptible things. Trying to satisfy the desire for God in our hearts (“He has set eternity on our hearts,” the Preacher says in Ecclesiastes), you and I craft idols out of the creation instead of submitting to the only true God.

Observe the history of Israel: time and again God’s people returned to their idolatrous ways, adoring the gods of the nations instead of cherishing their God, who alone is true. Our recent study of Chronicles painted a portrait of cycles of idolatry and repentance among Judah following Solomon’s death, but you and I might have expected such after reading the account in Exodus of Moses’ descent from receiving the law on Sinai. Moses came down from the mount only to find Aaron, the high priest, leading God’s people in crafting idols to worship from earrings and jewelry.

Idolatry is, in many ways, the theological story of humanity, and you I still today engage in the service of false gods. Granted, not many of you do obeisance to bronze statues in your living room – but how quickly you take a good gift of God, such as food or golf, and make it into the thing you desire most in life. You spend an inordinate amount of your precious, limited resources (time and money, to name two) on acquiring food or golf. You take a nice gift and turn it into the telos, or goal, of your existence. Their calves are your cars.

This is why you also must admit the worthlessness of the idols you worship. Again, Psalms 115 and 135 set forth the foolishness of serving idols over against the wisdom of trusting in the Lord, who made the heavens and the earth. The idols of the nations are made by beings who themselves were made by God; yet the one, true God made all things. The idols of the nations have eyes but cannot see, ears but cannot hear and lips but cannot speak. The Lord, meanwhile, beholds His people with His mercy, hears their prayers in the Name of His Son Jesus, and has created and sustains all things by the word of His power. He hears – and helps – His penitent people.

I admit that cooking is engaging work, and food is a gift from God that both delights the senses and sustains our gloriously made bodies. Yet the food wears off after a while, and when the tough times come, food cannot ultimately deliver you and me. It can take our mind off troubles, but it cannot deal with the source of our trouble, sin. It is good, created by God; but it is created.

Can the thing(s) you desire most in life save you? Compare them to the Lord God, and then evaluate the trajectory of your life.

If you and I are going to draw near to the one, true God this new year and delight in the blessings of His holy presence in our lives, we daily must repent of the idols in our hearts and lives.

The process of making straight the highway of our Lord begins with identifying your cherished idols. The Israelites had their heaps of rubbish – molten statues and the like – which were difficult to conceal. You and I must search our hearts (as Ezekiel says in chapter 14 of his prophecy) for those idols of our inmost being: the objects upon which we lavish our time, money and energy and upon which we fasten our hopes and desires.

Examine your day planner. Explore your checkbook’s register. Note what you think of and desire when you’re on an afternoon walk or driving from place to place. It will not be difficult to identify the false gods that clutter your life.

You then must repent of your idol worship, which involves a daily, even moment-by-moment turning from them. Observe how they promise blessing but only bring pain, how they continually disappoint you. See the wickedness of giving your heart and life to anyone or thing other than the one, true God, who made you and redeemed you by the blood of His Son. Confess this sin and ask for God’s grace to turn every day. This process might be extended and demanding; Hezekiah’s men spent half a month cleansing the temple of idols in olden times!

And as you identify, repent of and turn from your idols, heed the warning St. John issues you in 1 John 5:21: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” Guard your soul with prayer, with vigilance, with deeper trust in the Lord and in His Word. Your enemy lurks around the corner, and the old man of sin in you is ever ready to craft new idols or to flee back to old ones. Guard your soul, for it is precious.

Maturing has shattered many of my childhood illusions, most notably the idea that because I did not have any statuettes in my possession I therefore could not be guilty of idolatry.

Your mind and mine are idol factories, indeed. We choose to worship the creation rather than the Creator, and our lives reflect that evil choice. We even can take something so good, given to us by God, such as family – and mold it into our own little idol.

This year, 2008, keep the glory and majesty of God your Creator and Savior ever before you. Remember the triumph and incomparable worth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Cast your worthless idols away, dear though they may be. Only the Lord God has made you; only He in Christ has saved you. Only He deserves your heart and life.