Word of Salvation – Vol. 26 No. 17 – January 1981

 

Begin With God

 

Sermon by Rev. T. Jansma on Exodus 20:3

Scripture Reading: Psalm 19

Psalter Hymnal: 304; 29; 122; 328

 

This first commandment is the keystone of our moral foundation. It is a summons to purge the shrine of our hearts of every false worship, and turn our faces to the source of our being and blessing. It calls us to our guiding principles, to our first loyalty, to our center of gravity. It sets up the pole to which the compass of our life must always turn. It tells us that we must begin with God or we shall never begin at all. “You shall not kill”, “You shall not steal” and all the rest of the moral law is anchored here. Cut it loose from this first precept and there is no mooring for our religion or life.

We live in a universe of law, both physical and spiritual. The laws that govern the spirit are just as inviolable and permanent as the laws that govern the body. You may ignore the law of gravity by stepping off a cliff, but the consequence is death. And if you ignore the moral law you also come to disaster. The Ten Commandments are no outmoded, ancient code, but enshrine permanent moral principles which govern man’s welfare and happiness. They may need fresh application to new problems that arise in an ever-changing historical development, but the moral law is never obsolete, dispensable or irrelevant no more than the laws which govern the physical universe. Obey or die that is the alternative which meets us everywhere in God’s creation

This seems to be little appreciated in our materialistic age. We have come to know a great deal about the laws of matter and we pride ourselves in our ability to use them and conform to them for our welfare and comfort. We understand the laws of force and motion and by obeying them we can perform amazing feats of power and speed. We are careful about the laws of diet, hygiene, sanitation, etc. for our physical health. We have experts to keep our machines and gadgets functioning according to the laws which govern them. We do not complain about or question the operation of law in the physical world. Indeed, even a child knows that without law there would be chaos. But why do we not acknowledge the same truth in our moral world? Why do we assume we can break the laws of our spirits and survive or prosper?

Here lies the great tragedy of our Christian civilization. Our danger is not the open challenge of a Communistic Atheism, of a forthright rejection of Christian morality. Our danger lies in our own shallowness, insincerity and indifference. We have become physical giants and spiritual dwarfs. A twisted mind in a powerful body is dangerous. So is a power age without moral conviction. The breakdown of moral consciousness and personal integrity in high places which has become a scandal in our time should not surprise us. This is only a symptom of the disease which has infected our generation. We have violated and ignored the laws of health; we have fallen ill, death is working in us.

But there is a cure. The laws still operate, and to return to them is our salvation. There is a way to achieve moral backbone, to resist wrong and embrace right. And the cure begins here — “You shall have no other Gods before me!” The cure does not begin with man, but with God. What fools we are to think that we can start anywhere but with God. We used to think that the earth was the center around which the sun moved. But now we know that it is the other way around. But puny little man still thinks that he is at the center of things. One great philosopher began his system with the thesis “cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am). He was only expressing in a different way what man has always been saying. However, the Bible insists that we must begin in another way, “God is, therefore I am”. God is, therefore the world exists. There is a sun, moon, stars, there is history, and meaning to life, we live, move and have being, because God is.

God is the fact behind all facts. God is the first fact by virtue of which all other facts exist. God is — this is the axiom with which we begin, and nothing changes it. In spite of denial, rebellion, idolatry and atheism, God is. The sun does not cease to exist because the blind man does not see it, neither does God cease to be because man tries to think God out of existence.

The very existence of the unbeliever and atheist presupposes the existence of God. We cannot even deny God unless God gives life and breath for that denial. If you will not believe in God, there is nothing I can say or do to change your mind. If you insist that I must prove the existence of God, I can only reply that God is unprovable. I do not mean to say that there are no proofs of God’s existence. On the contrary, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork” Psalm 19:1. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and God head”– Rom.1:20.

God is self-evident and self-revealing. If you close your eyes I cannot open them for you. The evidence of God is everywhere within us and around us. But when I say that God is unprovable, I mean that we cannot recognize and understand these evidences unless we first get rid of the prejudice and blindness of unbelief. The believing heart produces the understanding mind. You see, a god who fits man’s measurements is no God at all. We can describe him only as he describes himself. It is folly and presumption to try to fit the infinite into the finite, to pour the ocean into a thimble. What you and I can take into our little minds is so limited, so small. God is far beyond our understanding. Our little drop cannot be the measure of his infinite ocean. I can show you the exquisite lace of a snowflake, the diamond sparkle of a dewdrop, the delicate tints of a flower, a microscopic speck of protoplasm, or vast worlds of stars and suns.

All these are fashioned by the hand of God. But you will not see that hand of God until he is enthroned in your heart. I can tell you of the love of God in Jesus Christ, his saving love for sinners, his pleadings and promises, his warnings and admonitions; and all these will be meaningless to you until you honestly believe in God in your heart of hearts. The choice is not between proving and disproving God. Neither one is possible nor sensible. God exists no matter how we sputter and stammer for or against God. But the choice is between believing and disbelieving; between sight and blindness; between an orderly creation and a chance universe; between God and chaos.

Now I know I am speaking to a great many people who do believe in God, and perhaps you are thinking that this first commandment is not too difficult. You have your troubles farther down the line with, “Honor your father and your mother”, “You shall not commit adultery” or “You shall not covet”. People used to have a great many Gods, but today we wouldn’t think of worshipping Baal or Molloch as the ancient Israelites and their neighbours; did. We wouldn’t think of reviving the worship of the Greeks and Romans. Statues and shrines of Mars and Venus and Bacchus are welcome in our museums but hardly in our worship. But have we really put away these idols even though we no longer think of them as persons?

There is a shrine in every heart, a centre of devotion, a basic and first loyalty. And when we examine that shrine in our hearts we do not find a crude, ancient idol there, but can we also say that we do not find the worship which these ancient gods represented? Is Mars now merely a political cartoon or do we still recognize him in our envy, strife and hatred? Venus de Milo lost her arms, but have we thereby escaped her embrace? Our lust and wantonness, the corruption of our sweetest and tenderest emotions, the pollution of marriage, the worship of sex testify that Venus still has a shrine in our hearts. Bacchus too is still with us. His cult meets in the poor man’s club at the corner pub, in the parlours of the rich and the council chambers of the great. We pour out fabulous wealth in libation to Bacchus.

The old superstitions and crude idolatries have vanished in our age of science and reason. The lightning and thunder are no longer mysteries. The mighty forces of nature which brought ancient man to his knees leave us erect because we know them and can harness them. We break open all secrets and explain all mysteries because we are now gods in our own right. We have believed the lie of the devil to Mother Eve, — “You shall be as gods”. We have come far from the old idols and superstitions, but are we any nearer the living God? Or have we merely exchanged the old gods for new ones, and are we just as far or farther from the truth? We are not irreligious. In fact, there seems to be some evidence that our interest in religion has been on the increase in the last few years. At least our churches are reporting more members and bigger budgets. But that is no proof that we are more obedient to the first commandment, more devoted to the one true and living God. The disillusionments and the confusion of our time may have shaken somewhat our calm confidence in man and our man-made gods. But are we now turning with heart and soul to the God of the Bible, or is our new interest in religion merely a retreat from intellectual confusion into a vague world of make-believe, built out of our own feelings and wishful thinking? Are we retiring from a world of reality which we can no longer bear, into a world of unreality which we make out of pleasing but purely imaginary stuff?

Ancient man fashioned his gods out of wood and stone; modern man is just as foolish when we fashion gods out of sentiments, dreams, rituals and liturgical forms. When God gave this law to Israel he did not leave them to guess and search after his identity. He said, “I am the Lord thy God which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” That God is the only God, and beside him we may have no other gods. He is God who slew the Egyptians, who called Moses, who appeared to Abraham, who formed Adam, who created all things out of nothing. He is God who thundered from Sinai, led Israel into Canaan, punished their disobedience and gave them wonderful promises. He is God who sent his Only Son into the world to bear the sins of men and bring salvation and peace to our hearts. He is God who still calls men to worship him through Jesus Christ, the crucified Saviour.

He is God in whom we live and move and have our being. He is God who reveals himself from Genesis to Revelation and in all his works in nature and history. There is only one God, and He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If we reject him we do not destroy him, we only destroy ourselves. “You shall have no other gods before me” — that is the first law for us. Here we must begin or sink in our own intellectual and moral chaos.