[Everybody here in the church knows that the text I just read from the Bible as the theme for today's sermon is the First Commandment, the first of the Ten that God communicated to His covenant people through Moses on Mount Sinai. The Ten Commandments are the foundation of the covenant that God made with man. And when God renewed that old covenant in Jesus, He did not abolish the old covenant, but strengthened it. So the Ten Commandments are the law governing the lives not only of the people of the Old Testament, but also of the people of the New Testament. So I thought that, God willing and living, on the last Sunday of each month, when the seal of the New Testament is brought before us in visible emblem in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, we might take one of the commandments of the Old Law and measure our lives by who we are and what the Lord wants us to do with it. So let us now try to hear God's word to us through the first commandment!"I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of service. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." (Exodus 20:2-3) We can understand this statement if we first try to imagine for a moment how the people of Israel could have understood it when they first heard it there in the wilderness.
Jacob's descendants in Egypt had multiplied to the point of becoming a separate people. There, in the Egyptian environment, they were surrounded by the classical idolatry of the pagan world, the images, statues and worship of Isis, Osiris and the other gods. The extent to which they too had adopted the idolatrous cult of paganism is shown by the fact that, even after their liberation from Egypt, in their very first spontaneous manifestation, they poured themselves a golden calf, in the style of the Egyptian religion, and began to worship it as a saviour god. Later in their history, too, they keep falling back into some form of ancient pagan idolatry. This also shows that they only knew idols, and had forgotten the invisible God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was not difficult to forget, for the God of Jacob was very different from all other gods. He could not be flashed like Isis, or Zeus, or Jupiter. He was an invisible God whose name was not even allowed to be spoken. Nor did he have a visible dwelling place like the Greek gods of Olympus. There was no way the pagan world could conceive of a god with no image, no statue, not even a name. Nor even a people to honour and worship him.
And here is the great difference between the invisible Lord and all the other gods. The other gods all exist by virtue of the fact that there are people who consider them gods, who make them out to be gods, who worship and adore them. If people then abandon such a god, his power is over. Therefore, an idol god is only powerful and lives as long as he has many worshippers. An idol god always stands or falls with the people who consider him a god. Zeus, the arch-god of the Greeks, was very powerful as long as the Greeks believed in him. Today, however, he would only regain power if there were again those who believed him to be a god. But until then, this once mighty god is locked away in the pages of mythology books and his temple is a tourist attraction.
But the invisible God, whose name is simply Lord, is the omnipotent God of heaven and earth, and will remain so even if no mortal man believes in Him, even if everyone has forgotten Him. This nameless and unutterable God is God without those who believe in Him! This God made a covenant with the ancients, with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but was then forgotten in the faith of posterity. And now imagine a people who had completely forgotten the God of their ancestors, a people full of the idolatrous customs of paganism, now suddenly being addressed by that God in the wilderness. Out of the unknown, out of the invisible, out of the nameless, a God speaks and declares, 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of service. Thou shalt have no other gods before me." (Exodus 20:2-3)
Without this people knowing this God, without worshipping Him, without praying to Him, without asking Him: this God, entirely at His own initiative, intervened in the destiny of this people, delivered them from the tyranny of Pharaoh, began a new history with this people and declared with full authority, "I am your God, ... There shall be no gods before me that are strange to you."
Through this declaration, I am almost shaken by the reality, the power and the love of the person of the one true God! Thus, indeed, only he who is not invented by man, who has power over men, who is above everything and everyone, who is the supreme Lord, can intervene in the life of a people or a man! Isn't it wonderful? Someone whom the eyes of man have never seen, whom the heart of man has never thought of, whom man cannot even give a name to: he simply calls to me and says, "You are mine! And so he once spoke into the life of a publican named Matthew. On another occasion, two fishermen were tying a net on the shore of a lake when someone interfered with their work: leave everything and follow me! (Mt 4,18-20) Just a few minutes before, these two men had no intention of changing their way of life, and now, suddenly, unexpectedly, without being asked, Someone comes into their lives with full power. Or King Herod, who is enjoying the pleasures of forbidden love with great peace of mind, when suddenly a voice interferes in his sinful affair: "No! Put an end to it! Forbidden! Who asked you? He did not! Who dares to interfere in the private affairs of a powerful lord, a king?
What power is there that knows everyone, keeps account of everything, even of those who ignore it, and simply declares, "I ... am your God!" Yes: God is Lord and God even if someone ignores him! And this invisible God declares in full power among us, "I ...am your God!" Do not misunderstand: this is not God's message, but his personal word to us now! "I ... am your God!" Take note that you are mine! I want something with you. I have a purpose, a plan for you. I want to lead you on new paths, I want to involve you in my service. "Thou shalt not have strange gods before me." (Exodus 20.3) Cast away, crush all other gods, all other idols that you fear, that you serve, that rule over you, that hold you in their power, and be all mine, only mine!
The reason God says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" is because He knows full well that we are all naturally inclined to idolatry. Oh, not like the Greeks, who had gods filling the whole Olympus, nor like the Mohammedans, who have only idol gods. But it is simply our nature to cling to idol gods whether we give them a name or not. Because what is idolatry? It is putting someone or something before the Lord God. That someone or something is the idol that occupies the first place in my heart, who or what has the last word in my life. Who or what holds me in its bondage or under its spell. Who or what I love more than the living God.
Old preachers listed possible idols with great fervor. Divided into three groups, they said: the world, people and ourselves can be our idols, our alien gods. The world with its pleasures, money, power and glory. The people: for example, the child, the spouse, the family, the home. Ourselves as the most cunning idol: our own selves, with our desires, habits and whims. There is something naively touching in such a list, as if there could be anything in this boundless world that could not become an idol before God, from stamp collecting to sport, from the memory of a dear dead person to the hatred of an enemy, from the machine to art, from a glass of wine to the fear of tomorrow. Yesterday, in a public cemetery, I saw a gravestone inscription: "While you were alive, I loved you, while I live, I weep for you." That's idolatry too! Someone said in a quiet pastoral conversation, "I can't resist my blood! That's idolatry too!
You know: it's like the prodigal son, of whom we read that when he left his father's house, he "married a citizen of that country". So then, he who is taken out of the dominion of the one true God, is separated from Him, and wants to know Him no more: sooner or later he runs into the arms of another lodger, is carried away to the service of another. Now, everyone knows for himself to which citizen or master of his own prodigal life's country he has gone, to which substitute god he serves! For he whose God is not the Lord, must necessarily have some substitute-god: there is no godless man in the world! And these substitute gods - be they money, love, drink, fear, or whatever - oppress our lives. The prodigal son is sent by his new master to live with the pigs. This is what all foreign gods do to those who turn away from the one True God because of them! Think now of your own individual idol, which degrades you, animalizes you, exploits you, makes you miserable. Later it turns out that it demands everything but gives nothing. Every foreign god is a tyrant: Egypt, the house of service, a slave-owner who robs us of our freedom.
Do you feel how much fearful love there is in this warning, "Thou shalt not have strange gods before me"? It is not jealousy that speaks here, but fear. God knows these foreign gods better than we do, He knows how these people are deceived and cheated! The same jealous love speaks to us here, in this first commandment, as on the cross of Calvary! See how this love fears, how it protects, how it guards, when it says, "I the Lord am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me." (Exodus 20:3) He does not want His creatures, His children, to be slaves.
The God who brought you out of the land of Egypt is speaking to you! "I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage..." Again, without asking, without claiming! It is the God who entered the world in human form, who took upon Himself the visible form in Jesus Christ, and who did not then, like the idols, desire men to sacrifice themselves for Him, but He sacrificed Himself for men. Who, because we would not give Him our hearts, He gave our lives for us. Who died on the cross, Who willingly gave Himself as a sacrifice to the destructive power of foreign gods, and Who broke their power, their might, when He rose from the dead! This God now speaks into your life with all divine power: "I am the Lord, I am your God..." You can be completely free and completely mine! "I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of service. Thou shalt have no other gods before me." (Exodus 20:2-3)
What this means in practical terms is that you are all that you are and all that you have, your time, your strength, your talents, your money, your heart - so let it be truly His! Just try to take God as your Lord seriously: you will soon notice the incredible revolutionary power that is beginning to stir within you! Try from now on to seriously reckon with this claim of God as your Sovereign Lord: you will find that it will become a source of power for you to radically transform your whole world.
Voltaire, a French philosopher who denied the existence of God, was once in his home with friends, mocking the belief in God, when his servant entered with a tray in his hand and so he heard the mocking words. When the servant went out, Voltaire rudely attacked his guests for using insulting language in front of the staff, saying, "If these people no longer believe in God, what is to assure us that something will not disappear from the silverware?" Well: I think Voltaire could have safely let his guests continue to mock a god who exists only to keep people from stealing silverware. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Father of Jesus Christ, is not a God who wants to educate people to be good and virtuous citizens, but a God who has redeemed our lives from death, from sin, from the tyranny of foreign gods, from the house of service, and who, through Jesus, makes us into people with renewed life, people whose God is the invisible Lord, the supreme love that wants to redeem the world! That is why he speaks into our lives now, "You shall have no gods alien to me!"
I know that our idols are very close to our hearts, often we may not want them, but even if we did, we cannot get rid of them. In conclusion, let me tell you that someone once suffered terribly under the spell of an idol that was almost destroying his body and soul. He could not get rid of it. His counselor told him: "Shout out loud: I do not believe in the power of the idol, I believe in Jesus Christ! He did. With all his might he cried out, "I do not believe in the power of the idol, I believe in Jesus Christ! And at once the strangling arms of the idol-god fell from his heart like unlocked shackles!
The idol-god is your doing, he has no power over you if you do not believe in him. If he rise again in you, do not fear him, do not bow down before him, cry out to him boldly, I do not believe in the power of the idol, I believe in Jesus Christ, my only true Lord and my God.
Amen
Date: 25 August 1957.