Westwood Presbyterian Church

September 13th, 2009

197 Browning  Boulevard, Winnipeg, Manitoba  R3K 0L1

REV. PETER BUSH's SERMONS

1^st and 2^nd Commandment

    

Today we begin a sermon series that will take us through the 10 Commandments. Now as soon I have said that, everyone starts to think, “We are in for everything we don’t like about preaching, we are all going to be made to feel guilty.” It is true that we may be challenged to change some of ways of living over the next weeks – but much deeper than that we will, I hope, have discovered two other things.

1.      The 10 Commandments are full of grace. We will see more of that a little later.

2.      It is not without reason that the 10 Commandments have been called the 10 best ways to live.

 

     A quick reminder of context. The people of Israel had been rescued by God from the land of Egypt where they were slaves -- brought safely across the Red Sea to the Sinai Peninsula and on to Mt. Sinai. There Moses went up the mountain and met with God and among the things he brought down the mountain was the 10 Commandments, the heart of “The law of Moses”.

     All 10 Commandments are listed twice: once in Exodus 20 where they appear in the story of Moses going up the mountain and a second time in Deuteronomy 5 in one of Moses’ speeches to the people of Israel shortly before his death. Throughout the Bible references are made to the Commandments. Jesus talks about them, summarizes them, and expands the meaning of some of them.

 

     But let’s dive in. When Jews think about the 1^st Commandment it starts this way – “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…” Did you hear law anywhere in there? Did you hear a call to do anything? Anything that we had to obey? No, the 10 Commandments begin with grace – with a statement of what God has done. God saved the people of Israel brought them out of slavery, rescued them, and made them a free people. God did that simply because God loved the people of Israel. They did nothing to earn that love, they weren’t better than other people, they were not more godly, they were not better at serving him, God rescued the people simply because in love and grace and mercy God chose to do that.

     This is really important to get into our heads – God’s grace comes first, God’s grace precedes our obedience. It is not that we follow God and then he decides to show love and grace to us – that would be that we are earning the salvation God offers. No, it is the other way round, God shows love and grace and mercy and we in return love Him back. “For God first loved us…” the Bible tells us.

     Now, we might say, “But I was not rescued from slavery in the land of Egypt.” But we have been rescued from slavery – slavery to sin – slavery to the power of sin in our lives to wreck havoc in our lives. Paul describes well the human condition – “The good I know I should do I do not do, and the wrong that I know I should not do I end up doing.” Yes, at times we do the right thing – and good flows from that. That is the result of God’s grace. But we also know the pain of trying to do the right thing and it blows up in our face, or trying not to do the wrong thing and getting sucked in anyways. That is the power of sin in our lives, and we have been freed from that by the love and grace of God – a love and grace made clear to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. A death and resurrection that save us – that are our Exodus from the power of sin – the house of slavery. God in grace has acted, saving us.

 

     If we have been saved from sin does that mean that Christians don’t need to worry about the 10 Commandments? The 10 Commandments are still relevant to Christians, not as a way to earn God’s favour – but as a way to say “Thank You” to God. Our thank you card to God for saving us is shaped by the 10 Commandments.

     When John Calvin led worship services the congregation would read the 10 Commandments together. After telling God what they had done wrong in the prayer of confession and after hearing the good news of God’s forgiveness, the congregation read the 10 Commandments. It was a reminder not of what they had done wrong – for that was dealt with – it was forgiven – no, it was a reminder of what a Christian response to God’s forgiveness looks like.

 

     “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery … have no other gods before me.”

     The Hebrew word that is translated “before” is a flexible word which gives us some sense of the breadth of this command.

1.      To have no gods before God – that is in front of. God is #1 there can be no other #1.

2.      To have no gods beside me – that is in addition to God. There is only one God, God is God and there will be no competitors. People can not have two gods that they follow.

3.      To have no gods against me – there is no dualism with good and evil in equal power in competition with each other.   

 

     The God of grace who saved us from the house of slavery, saved us from the power of sin and death and hell – that God is worthy of all our praise and adoration (that part is easy) but that God is also worthy of being the one to whom we cling, being the one we obey, being the one we whose commands we follow.

     It is easy to turn the “have no other gods before me” into a dry statement of fact – a thing that we check off on a list of being a good Christian. Deuteronomy 13:4 takes the idea of “no other gods before me” and gives it life and energy, makes it live for us.

The Lord your God you shall follow, Him alone you shall fear, His commandments you shall keep, His voice you shall obey, Him you shall serve, and to Him you shall hold fast.                        -- Deuteronomy 13:4

To have no other gods before God is an invitation into a dynamic relationship with God. A God who is to followed and served, a God whose awesome majesty should drive us to our knees and who commands our obedience, but a God who allows us to cling to Him for dear life for salvation comes only through this God.

     This reflection on the 1^st Commandment also helps us walk the narrow line between two views of God that dominate our culture’s thinking.

On the one hand there is a view that God is a distant God who wound up the world and now from a great distance looks down on the earth, but has no relationship with people. The 1^st Commandment reminds us, “This is the Lord your God who saved you” – there is no distance here; this is a God of personal connection.

On the other hand there is a view that God is “my God” who comes along with me and to bless everything I do. God is my personal buddy who tells me what a great guy I am. And so God is my size, fitting into my goals and desires. In reflecting on the 1^st Commandment the Deuteronomy text reminds us that God is to be feared. God is bigger than us and can not be nicely boxed in. In fact, God is allergic to any of the nice neat boxes we want to place God in. God smashes his way out of them on a consistent basis.

 

     And we have just segued to the 2^nd Commandment that we are not to make idols of any kind. The 1^st and 2^nd Commandments are tightly linked flowing into one another.  

      There is not a great deal of chance that large numbers of people in the Westwood and Crestview area are going to start building metal or stone images in their back yards and then bow down to them. So it would be easy to say this commandment does not speak to us. But we are all at risk of creating God in our image – or trying to box God into a shape and a space that we want God to operate in, but not anywhere else.

     I hear people say “my God” does this, but “my God” will not do that. God is free from the limits we might place on God, God can not be boxed into a size so that he is my pet who does what I want. God is the awesome God of majesty and any attempt to limit him, to put fences around him, is doomed to failure.

 

     We also so easily create things that we put up in competition with God: work, recreation, money, status, self-esteem, respect, and so on. This week I heard a parent talking about why she home schooled her children (I am not opposed to home schooling – that is not why I am telling this story). She said, “Family is the most important thing in the world and by home schooling I am making sure my family stays together.” I am sorry, family is important – but it is not the most important thing in the world. In a choice between family and God – God says that He wins, he trumps family.

     Jesus said these shocking words:

Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children,

brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.-Luke 14:26-7

Jesus is saying that in comparison to our love for God, and our willingness to serve God, our love for family and for our own lives looks like hate. That our love for God is to be so profound that it dwarfs everything else. Christians around the world who face persecution know the truth of this, they have been thrown out of their families because they became Christian, they lose their lives because they follow Jesus Christ, and children are refused admission to university because their parents are Christians.    

     Family can become an idol when we place it ahead of God. Trying to save our lives can be an idol when we place our life ahead of following God. I realize that these are hard demanding words that make us want to rebel, to say the call is too much. But it is simple God wants us to put him first. He gave His one and only Son, Jesus Christ for us, and he invites us to be as committed to Him as He is to us. To have no idols in our lives.

 

     But why this hard demand on God first? Why so strongly oppose any competitor?

     Anything that diminishes God, diminishes us. Our highest calling is to follow God. We, as human beings, are at our best when we are serving the God who has rescued us from slavery. We are the most blessed, the most fulfilled, the most ourselves – when we place God first. And in these 1^st two commandments God reminds us of that fact.

     These two commandments end with grace. Yes, God stands against those who oppose Him, those who limit Him, those who violate his commands. But God acts in grace towards the children and grand-children and on to the 1,000^th generation of those who love him and serve him.

 

      As I read that this week I thought of Danny McKay, the speaker at the Presbyterian Youth Retreat over the Labour Day long weekend. McKay’s grand-father was a Presbyterian minister, a man of faith. Danny did not go to church very often as a kid. His first brush with the police was when he was 5 years old. By high school he was stealing cars and doing drugs. But then one night he discovered God’s grace – more accurately God’s grace discovered him and Danny realized that the God of grace loved him and had saved him from slavery to sin.

     God’s grace comes in a special way to the children, grand-children, great-grand-children, and great-great and so on great-grand-children of those who cling to God having no other gods before the God of grace and love who has saved us.