Word of Salvation – Vol. 47 No. 40 – October 2002

 

There is Only One True God – Worship Him!

 

Sermon by Rev. M. P. Geluk on Lord’s Day 34B
            (Q&A 94-95 Heid Cat) Exodus 20:3

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 45:18-25; 1John 5:18-21

Suggested Hymns: BoW 95; 130; 96:1,3,4; 115:1,2,3; 29:1,5

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We are looking at the first commandment and it’s quite short.  It says, “You shall have no other gods before me.”  Yet, it is of such importance that if it weren’t for this first commandment, the other nine would no longer be as relevant.

The first commandment is the foundation of the other nine.

Imagine the Ten Commandments as a ten-story office block with the first commandment being the ground floor.  If you were to rip out the ground floor, the whole building would collapse.  So it is with the Ten Commandments.  Take away the first commandment and the other nine will fall down.

If God is not the only true God, and that would mean that other gods and the religions of those gods are just as true, then you cannot insist on true Christian worship, which is what the second commandment is all about.  If other gods are also true then the worship of these gods must be okay, too, and you can invite a Buddhist monk or a Jewish rabbi to conduct a worship service in the church.  And that’s exactly what happened in a Perth Anglican Church recently.  An Islam cleric was invited to speak in the Sunday service.

Also, the third commandment about God’s Name, and the fourth about His day, are no longer all that important either, if we were to admit the existence of other gods.  It will be the same with the remaining six commandments.  If God is not the only true God, then His commandments about honouring parents, about murder, adultery, stealing, false witness and coveting, all lose their force.  For when it becomes okay to say that Islam’s god or the Hindu’s god are just as good as our own God, then it must also be okay to say that the rules of these gods are also valid.  The difficulty is, however, that the Ten Commandments and the rules of these gods are contradictory.  And if they do not say the same thing, then both can’t be right.

Yet, this sharing of God with other gods has been happening ever since man became a sinful being.  The Old Testament tells us about the Canaanite religion whose god was Moloch and this god demanded the human life of the first-born if it was male.  When you threw your child into a sacrificial fire then this religion said that your crops would grow well and there be a good harvest.  But this rule flew straight into the face of the sixth commandment of the one, only true God, “You shall not murder.”

Today there are still people who believe it is okay to kill a baby when the death of that child will secure a better income and quality of life.  The only difference is that you don’t kill the baby by throwing it into the fire that was burning in the belly of the god Moloch, but you kill it in the mother’s belly before the child is born.  This, in spite of the one, only true God still saying, “You shall not murder.”

Some time ago, Richard Richardson, a retired Australian politician, openly said that it is okay for a politician to lie in certain situations.  Many objected to that but many approved.  But it flies straight into the face of the ninth commandment of the one, only true God, “You shall not give false witness.”  Likewise, many people believe that it is okay to commit adultery in certain circumstances.  This, in spite of the one, only true God still saying, “You shall not commit adultery.”

You can see that a rejection of the first commandment, about not having other gods, leaves you free to make up your own mind about the other nine commandments.  And this is what has been happening throughout history.  The first commandment is, therefore, as important as the ground floor is important to a ten story building.  In fact, it is far more important.  A collapsed office block can be rebuilt.  But it is far more difficult to rebuild humanity by getting all people to worship the one, only true God.  And yet, if people are to be saved from the judgment on sin from the only true God, then they must forsake their false gods.

The one, only true God!  To many that sounds so arrogant when there are so many religions in the world.  You can hear the howl of protests.  Do you mean to say that the Christian’s God is the only real God?  Are you saying that Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and all the other non-Christian faiths in the world, are all false?  Why can’t you Christians be a bit more humble and be open to the idea that perhaps all these different religions do worship the one God but each calls God by a different name and each faith worships Him in its own way?  And what’s wrong with that anyway?

The answer from God’s own Word is that you cannot love and worship God in your own way.  The one, only true God insists that we love and worship Him according to His way and that is by obeying the Ten Commandments.  We should not even call God the Christian’s God because that’s not what He is.  God is an independent Being on whom everything in heaven and earth depends.  He is unique and has existed in eternity before anything came into being by His creative power.

2.  What is idolatry?

The Catechism, in Answer 95, says that, “Idolatry is having or inventing something in which one trusts in place of or alongside of the only true God, who has revealed Himself in His Word.”

Are you clear on what this is saying?  Ask yourself – from where do we know God?  Did somebody invent Him?  No! We know God from God’s own Word.  The Bible is where God reveals Himself as the Creator of heaven and earth and all that exists in them.  God has made all things, visible and invisible.  Everything depends on Him.  There is no other being like Him.  God says in His Word, “There is no God apart from me – a righteous God and Saviour; there is none but me.  Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.” (Is.45:21,22).

Did you hear from that that God is also righteous and a Saviour?  God is not only the Creator, but He is also righteous or holy, and He makes it clear in His Word that a sinner is one who disobeys Him, and sin brings death.  But God is also the Saviour, and His Word makes it very clear that salvation is found only in His Son, Jesus Christ, “for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).  God alone is the Creator and He alone is the Saviour, and to be saved one must repent from sin and believe in Jesus Christ.

Now that’s who God is.  And it comes from God’s own Word.  It’s not a suggestion from me or someone else that God is like that.  It is God describing God.  Of course, one can say that whoever wrote the Bible has invented God.  But a careful study of the Bible will make it clear that God inspired human authors to write what He wanted them to write.  Divine inspiration makes the Bible true.  It took 1600 years to write the sixty-six books of the Bible.  Now it’s impossible that human authors with different backgrounds and from different times in history could produce a book like the Bible over that period of time and not have one part contradict another part.  The fact that the Bible has promises and fulfilment, fundamental teachings that are the same everywhere, and that its central theme is salvation in Jesus Christ, makes the Bible what it is – unique and inspired by God.  It is essentially God’s Word.  Therefore we believe the Bible’s claim that there is one, only true God.

People who can’t accept God’s claim that He is the only God will of course continue to argue against the Bible and the claims God makes for Himself.  But they do that because they reject the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.”  In the place of the only true God, these people have imagined or invented their own god in whom they trust.  They may say that what they believe is not a god.  They may think that a world economy fuelled by a consumer society in the global village will save the world.  But whatever it is, if they trust it, depend on it, swear by it, defend it, and put their hope in it, then it functions as a god for them.  And that is idolatry! – having a god besides the only true God whom we know from the Bible.

These self-made gods become very real for people who trust in them.  Shirley MacLaine, the film star and now a defender of New Age thinking, has this to say, “If everyone was taught one basic spiritual law, your world would be a happier, healthier place.  And that law is this: everyone is God.  Everyone!”

Shirley MacLaine is not the first one to say something like that.  Years ago the founder of Transcendental Meditation, Maharashi Mahesh Yogi, said something similar.  He said, “Be still and know that you are God.”  That assertion has been an aspect of eastern religion for centuries.  A psychiatrist by the name of M Scott Peck agrees with that.  He says in a book he wrote, “To put it plainly, our unconscious is God.  God within us.  We were part of God all the time… We are born that we might become, as a conscious individual, a new life form of God.”  A sport psychologist, who gets paid to motivate athletes and conducts seminars for the military and employees of major business corporations, describes what he does in this way: “Much of this work is about spiritual stuff, but we don’t ever say that because people start getting nervous when you talk about that… Our stance is that people are unlimited in their individual abilities, that as humans all of us are infinitely able to do anything we want.” (quoted from a sermon by Rev David Feddes, from The Back to God Hour).

These people are either saying that every human being is god, a part of god, or has the unlimited power of a god.  Now that’s idolatry.  The only true God says, “You shall have no other gods before me.”  He said, “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps.46:10).  He also said, “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me” (Is.46:8,9).  Travellers to India, Nepal and Tibet come across many shrines and temples built in honour of the various gods.  In Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal and the gateway to the Himalayas, some climbers join the local gurus and pray to these gods to give them protection and success when they attempt to scale Mount Everest.  Most of these mountain climbers are skilled and experienced, using the latest technology for their equipment and survival techniques.  Yet, they turn to these false gods for help, just in case their other god, technology, might fail them.  They ignore the one and only true God who made the mountains and who controls the weather.

In Hawaii, a different part of the world, professional surfboard riders join a local shaman on the beach in a prayer ritual to the god of the sea before they attempt to ride some of the biggest waves in the world.  They ignore the one and only true God who made the sea and its waves.  If they get to know Him from His Word, then they might even come to the conclusion that attempting to ride such waves is putting your life into unnecessary danger.

Australia has a number of champions in world swimming and from interviews, after they have just won a hard fought race, we often hear them say that they have just got to continue to believe in themselves and that they are capable of doing better.  If they focus on their ability then they will be among the best, if not the best.  Sports psychologists are trying hard to make competitors in various sports think that they are infinitely able to do anything they want.  Their trust is in themselves.  The human self has become a god.

The Lord Jesus Christ does not agree with any of that.  He said, “Apart from me, you can do nothing” (Jn.15:5).  When someone asked, “Show us the Father,” Jesus did not say, “Look inside yourself.”  He said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn.14:1-9).  The voices that urge people to think of themselves as god are not new.  Way back in the Garden of Eden, the serpent tempted Eve to disobey the only true God when he said, “You will be like God” (Gen.3:5).

It’s fashionable today and politically correct when people say that something is true for you when you believe it to be true for you.  They might believe in opposites, but if something is true for them, then it is true for them because they believe it is true for them.  This nonsense way of thinking makes truth relative, which is the same as saying that there is no objective truth.  Truth is what you make of it.

The same reasoning is applied to God.  People like to think that there is no God who is distinct and separate from man, who alone is the Creator and Upholder of the universe.  God, they say, is what you make of him, and that can be different for different people.  And so, people trust in the stars, they worship the earth and hug trees, they worship their dead ancestors and plead to their spirits to protect them.

3.  Don’t put your own salvation in danger by trusting in things other than God.

When God says, “You shall have no other gods before me”, then it means that salvation is only with Him through the Saviour, Jesus Christ.  There is no salvation in anything else.  The Catechism, in the first part of Answer 94, says the first commandment requires, “That I, not wanting to endanger my very salvation, avoid and shun all idolatry, magic, superstition, and prayers to saints or other creatures.”

That answer of the Catechism reflects a time when the false practices of the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th Century influenced the people of that time.  The Catechism’s warning about magic, superstition and prayers to saints and other creatures, is still relevant to our day and age, but let’s look at some things that have the potential to make all of us idolatrous.  I am thinking of the trust we give to modern medicine, expecting it to cure all our illnesses; to agricultural science to provide our food; to psychological theories to deal with our depression and stress; to professional counselling techniques to improve our marriages and families; and to business practices to make our financial investments secure.  These things in themselves are not wrong.  But what is wrong is the extent of the hope and trust that is put in them, and forgetting that in all these things we must first and foremost hope and trust in God.

Even the church is not free from idolatry.  Think of the trust and expectations that are placed in certain church programmes, evangelistic techniques, or worship styles.  Some of us have begun to look to these things as a means to help the church survive and keep the youth from going elsewhere.  But we could be putting our salvation at risk by trusting in activities and methods when we should be trusting in God for the existence and well-being of the church.

Substituting an idol invented by the church, in the place of God, is easily done.  Instead of looking to the only true God for our salvation, the way a particular church functions becomes the most important thing for us.  Instead of humbling ourselves before the majesty and holiness of God, we seek our spiritual highs in the music and personal expressions of our pious feelings.  Instead of us sinners looking to God for His grace and mercy, we rate the worship by what it did for us.

We put our salvation in danger when in the worship of God we are preoccupied with how slow or fast the organ played, or preoccupied with how loud or soft other instruments were, or preoccupied with how long or short the minister preached and how he went about it.  Yes, we are in danger of putting the only true God aside when we are filled with all kinds of other things.

Just how exactly do we put our salvation at risk?  Well, when we look too much to other things in the place of God, or alongside Him, then we have turned them into idols.  And those who turn to idols become like them.  That thing that we give so much time to, by defending it, by arguing about it, by thinking about it all the time, by making it very important, that thing, whatever it is, is consuming us.  It drives us and it demands our time and energy.  Then when it becomes the centre of our lives, then it has become an idol that has got us in its grip.  But by then it is often too late for us to notice it.  It’s only when one day we are made to realise that the one, only true God, is no longer the centre of our lives.  It’s when we have to admit to ourselves that our worship of the Lord our Saviour has slipped to the bottom rung, that we wake up to the fact that we are worshipping an idol.

4.  Sincerely worshipping God with all my heart.

The Catechism’s wording is beautiful.  It says when it answers the question, “What does the Lord require in the first commandment?  That I sincerely acknowledge the only true God, trust in Him alone, look to Him for every good thing humbly and patiently, love Him, fear Him, and honour Him with all my heart.”  Notice the words “acknowledge … trust … look to … love … fear … honour…”, and “with all my heart.”  Now ask yourself: for what and for who are you using words like that the most?  For the only true God, or for people and things in your life?

Do you, as a Christian redeemed by Christ, acknowledge God for your life and well-being more than your doctor, exercise and diet?  Do you, as a Christian redeemed by Christ, trust God for your safety more than all your security locks and warning systems?  Do you, as a Christian redeemed by Christ, look to God for your retirement arrangements more than your superannuation and pension?  Do you, as a Christian redeemed by Christ, love God more than your wife, husband, children or parents?  Do you, as a Christian redeemed by Christ, fear God the ultimate Authority and Judge of all men, more than any human authority?  Do you, as a Christian redeemed by Christ, honour God who has your life in the palm of His hand, more than those from whom you receive your weekly income?  Do you, as a Christian redeemed by Christ, worship God more than all the other things that are part of the worship service?

None of the above things or persons are wrong in themselves.  It isn’t a question of “either or”.  The question is – with whom is your heart and mind occupied the most?  God, or something or someone that you have allowed to become your idol?

In short, are we willing and ready to give up anything rather than go against God’s will in any way?  That’s a tough question when your heart is devoted to some idol.  But not so tough when you are prepared to let go of everything for the sake of being obedient to the only true God.  It comes down to this – do we love God more than anything else?  If we do, then Christ, His people the church, and kingdom, will be number one, consistently in our lives.  If that is not the case, then we probably still have a few idols that we love to keep.  But remember that whilst we hang on to them, we are not worshipping God with all our heart, and we are putting our salvation in danger.

Therefore, hear God, as He speaks to us out of concern for our spiritual well-being, “You shall have no other gods before me.”

Amen.