Again, our sermon text is just one verse, the first commandment. It is found in Exodus chapter 20, verse 3, where the Word of God says, Now what makes your faith as Christians true is not your faith in and of itself, but it is the one upon whom your faith rests. You see, faith can only be true faith if the one in whom you believe is true. It's entirely possible to practice your faith, to show prodigious piety and dedicated devotion in worship, and yet that worship mean absolutely nothing. That's the point. of the first of the Ten Commandments. It is unequivocally declaring to God's people, and indeed to the entire world, that there is but one God, and He alone must be worshipped. It doesn't matter how committed your faith may be if your faith is trusting in the wrong God. Because misplaced faith cannot save you. It cannot redeem you from your greatest need which is the problem of your own sin. It cannot make you right before God. In fact, faith in the wrong God not only cannot save you, but because God has said, you shall have no other gods before me, it also condemns you as a guilty sinner before the one true God. The first commandment takes aim then at the very heart of humanity's fallen nature. Satan has entered this world because God was not honored and worshipped as God alone. As Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptation that Satan brought before them, that temptation was to make themselves as God or as God's themselves. I mean, why can't I be A God is a question that pulses within the human heart, that is so easily turned from the Creator. And so Paul explained it well there in Romans 1. For although they, that is humanity, knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. But with this first commandment, God intends to demonstrate to the world through his people that he is the only God, and he deserves then our full attention in worship and devotion. And there are three main things then to think about when it comes to this first commandment. What it tells us about God, what it tells you about yourself, and how it points you to Jesus. So first of all, what does the first commandment teach us about God? It teaches us, as we've already said, there is only one God, so we ought to worship Him alone. The first commandment is God's call to exclusivity in worship of Him. Because He is the only God that exists. He is the only God, then, that must be worshipped. It's important to understand what God isn't saying with this commandment. He isn't saying that there are, in fact, other gods that exist, so you should just worship Him, though, instead of those gods and ignore them. No, what he's saying is there aren't any other gods. I am the only one. I am the only God that exists. He is not one God among many, but he is the exclusive God without exception. So don't worship and serve anything else because there is only one God who has made you and knows you and is your sovereign Lord. Now you may say, well, there are other gods that we read about in the Bible, right? What about also those other religions that exist in the world who boast of multiple gods? I mean, what about Baal and Moloch and Asherah? Or what about Allah or the gods of the Hindus? Are they not other gods? Well, yes, in a sense they are, but also no. They are worshiped as gods. But they are, in fact, not gods because they don't actually exist. The only God that exists is the God of the Bible. The Apostle Paul explains this in 1 Corinthians chapter 8. He says, Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence, and that there is no god but one. But although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. You see, the commandment reveals that there is no such thing as many gods. There is a one God and He alone, not a chief God amongst lesser deities, the only one, the Great I Am. This first commandment is absolutely monotheistic. Now, you can call many other things gods and worship them and give honor and esteem and devotion to them, from trees to mountains to rocks to rain to lightning to thunder to athletes and politicians and even your own self, but that doesn't make any of those things another god. They're false. As our confession rightly states, there is but one only living and true God who is infinite in being and perfection. You see, when God gave this commandment to the people of Israel, He was calling them to do something entirely different from all of the other religions of the nations around them. This would have been highly controversial. You see, the Egyptians and the Canaanites, they would have had very little problem with this first commandment if all it said was, make Yahweh the first God in a line of other gods, because that's exactly what they did. But God sets himself apart exclusively as the only God, demanding all worship. And everything else, then, is a powerless fake. This claim comes out as well in the first lines of the Bible. As we look in Genesis 1-1, in the beginning, God, only one God, created the heavens and the earth. Those words would have been very offensive to the ancient peoples around Israel. It would have been an offensive statement because while they had many creation stories, all of those stories involved supposed deities bringing about the universe into existence in some sort of plurality. Either there was some sort of cosmic war and the earth came about as an accidental result of that war, or you had a god and a goddess who procreated and gave birth to the world, or some other fanciful tale of multiple beings making all that exists out of something that already is. But Genesis 1 says, no, there was one God, and he calls the universe into existence out of nothing, just the word of his power. And he does that without outside help, neither of accident. It is intentional by his sovereign will. Now, since God is God alone, then, What does this commandment tell us as people to do? Well, obviously, to worship Him, but let's break that down. Remember, each commandment It gives us duties that we are to accomplish or follow and sins that it forbids. For every sin that you see forbidden, there is implied duties that follow. So what then are the duties and the sins of this first commandment? Well, first, let's consider those duties. If God is God alone, then it means we have a duty to rightly know him. That is to say, we must not only know that God exists, for that wouldn't go far enough. But we ought to know Him as a person in His being. We must acknowledge who He is, our Lord, our Creator, that He does then have all authority over us. That then leads to our duty to worship and glorify Him for who He is, not simply for what He has done. In fact, we understand the idea of thanking God for what He has done, and we ought to do that, right? We ought to praise Him for his mercy and his grace and his blessing and all that he pours out in our lives and his love towards us. But we also should praise God and worship him simply for who he is, for his being as the only true God. We are required then to trust him and to esteem him and delight in him and rejoice in him. Another duty that arises from this command then is to fear God. to show him that respect, that holy awe, that honor that he deserves, that rises up from our hearts when we begin to understand his power and his holiness and his might and his truth, that nothing is above him, that thus our duty is one of submission to him, recognizing his authority over our lives and yielding him all obedience. Now, those are some of the duties that are required by this first commandment. What are the sins forbidden? Well, first of all, there is atheism, which, of course, is the denial of God and that one is also estranged to Him, or from Him, rather, because of their guilt and sin. You see, atheism is more than just denying the existence of God. It also denies that I need God, that I need His mercy, His forgiveness, His grace. Not only does atheism sin against God by violating this first commandment, but it also sins against God's creation by denying the overwhelming rationality and evidence of God's existence in the world that he has created and rules over. David writes in Psalm 14 that the fool says in his heart there is no God. Folly, being a fool, it is an irrational senselessness and refuses to acknowledge what is plainly revealed. Another obvious sin forbidden by this commandment is idolatry. Idolatry in any form must be shunned, but what is idolatry? I like how the Heidelberg Catechism answers that question. I find it very helpful. 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. So idolatry shows up in different ways. There is blatant idolatry, which of course is to worship, honor, and esteem anything other than the God of the Bible. But there is a more moderate form of idolatry, which worships God, but not fully, not wholeheartedly. And it gives affections and honor to other things in addition to God. In other words, it is neglecting what is due properly to God. And then there is an even more refined version of idolatry, which is a failure to trust God fully and instead depend on other things, on secondary causes. For example, David writes in Psalm 20, some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. It's interesting though that David himself was guilty of that exact sin. For he numbered the strength of the armies of Israel and Judah. And he repents of this. We read of it in 2 Samuel. It says, And so then the point of this commandment is there is only one God. And because there is only one God, we ought to worship Him alone. In other words, at the heart of this commandment is a love for God. Love for God means that we must choose to follow and to obey Him fully. Israel in the Old Testament was often portrayed through the metaphor of a bride who was to be faithful to God alone. For she belonged to Him. And the first commandment was intended to keep God's people from being this unfaithful bride. It was meant to liberate them from the bondage of idolatry. That's why the Shema found in Deuteronomy 6-4 was so foundational to Israel's covenant identity. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Complete, absolute devotion. You see, God gave this command because he knows something about human nature. This commandment reveals to us what we need to believe about God, that He is the only God, and therefore we must worship Him. But it reveals something about us as well. It instructs us, and it is this, that we have hearts that desire other gods. That was Israel's ongoing perennial problem, right? They regularly indulged in some form of idolatry or another. In fact, what happens as God is inscribing this covenant treaty of the Ten Commandments to Moses up on the mountain? What happens during that time? The people are committing idolatry, making a golden calf, worshiping it. But what's interesting about that worship, they don't say this is some other God. They claim to be worshiping the Lord. You see, the problem was that the people of Israel gave up on worshiping God. They didn't. They simply did not worship Him alone, exclusively, wholeheartedly. And all throughout the nation of Israel's history, as you read in the Old Testament, The people don't remove worship entirely, but they add to it the worship of Baal or Asherah or some of these other deities. But remember, those gods aren't real. There's only one God, so He alone is to be worshiped. And so the first commandment reads, you shall have no other gods before me. And that little preposition is so important. And in Hebrew, the idea of being before is to be in the face of another, before one's presence in their very face. And so God is saying here, don't even put anything else before me in my face as if they are a God. You can't have me plus some other thing that you would honor and esteem and value as a God in your life. In other words, what this commandment is calling for then is this wholeness in our faithfulness to the Lord. But therein lies the problem. Because just like Israel, we like to give part of our devotion to God, we'll do that, but we won't give all of it. We always hold something back. We turn our hearts to other gods, lesser gods, because we think we need them or we're too easily pleased by them. C.S. Lewis said, in The Weight of Glory, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased. The joy of God's presence and all of His blessings are held out to us. And we like that idea. We look at it and we say, that's great, but look at these other things. Our pride, our careers, our relationships, our money, popularity, pleasure, so many other things. Well, no, it's not that we're rejecting God, but we just don't want all of Him. We'll give Him some of our heart, but not all of it. We will worship Him when it is convenient, when it makes us feel good about ourselves in a way that we want to worship Him rather than a way that He calls us to worship Him. Kevin DeYoung said, we all want a trivial pursuit God. If you've played Trivial Pursuit, you can get what he's talking about. A manageable deity to round out our lives and fill in one piece of the pie. But then we fill in that little pie with other pieces. Our worship is so fickle. Our churches are full of partiality. And when it's convenient, yes, we'll praise God, but when worship gets in the way of some other desire or some other pleasure, it's okay to lay it aside. And we just slide God over and look at the next God on our shelf. I mean, let me share personally for a moment, I don't do this often, but something the Lord taught me regarding this. I used to think, when you go on vacation, well, you're going on vacation, right, for yourself. It's your time, your rest, your relaxation, your fun, your family time, and there is truth to that. But I used to think, well, if the vacation went over the weekend and it happened to fall on the Lord's day, it was fine to spend that day at the beach or hiking through the woods or going to some festival and miss worship with God's people. Because after all, you're on vacation and it's just one Sunday of the year that you're missing. Well, the Lord convicted me of that some time ago. And now, when I do go on vacation, one of the first things I think of is, okay, where are we going to go worship? And we've worshiped at some interesting places. But the point is, recognize that you don't take a vacation from worshiping the Lord. Now, I certainly am not perfect, and in my devotion to the Lord, I have a long way to grow. But I am thankful for the Lord teaching me that he needs to be more important in my life than my own time of vacation. You see, God wants our whole hearts, not part of it. But the question is then, well, how do we get there? Because what this commandment reveals is we have hearts that are drawn to so many other pretty glittery things in life How do we get to this place where all of our heart and soul and mind and strength is loving the Lord as the only true and living God? How do you worship Him wholly, undividedly? Well, we keep the first commandments when we turn to the Christ of the commandments, which is the final thing we learn from this first commandment. You see, Jesus did what you fail to do so that you can do what God commands you to do through Him. Jesus liberates you to worship God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength when you do it through Him. I mean, we considered last week Again, the prologue of these Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are God's covenant charter to His people, where He begins by declaring to them who He is and what He has done. He says, I am the Lord your God. And what did He do? I brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. God is the God of His people, and He has liberated them from bondage. And of course, this covenant charter of God's covenant of grace becomes deeper and fuller and greater once Christ comes in the flesh and dies on the cross and rises from the grave and is now ascended to the right hand of the Father. I mean, think of it as a great church pipe organ. You know, at first the Ten Commandments sound forth a beautiful melody to the people of Israel who are God's people in the Old Testament. But some of the stops of that organ are pushed in. So you're not getting the full sound yet. It is sweet, it is beautiful, it is melodic. But the full power of the instrument has yet to sound forth. And then comes Jesus. And He comes in the flesh, God with us, our Emmanuel. And He goes to the cross to redeem a people for His name. And now, all the stops of the organ are pulled out. Every single one. And the full power of that instrument sounds forth, and it shakes the very rafters. You see, Jesus liberates God's people, His church, who are united to Him in faith, from the bondage of their sin and their shame and their failure to worship God alone. He frees you to worship God without fear of condemnation and to serve God through the grace of God and the power of the Spirit. and to know his life-giving blessing and what it means to be in his presence, rather than languishing in the bondage of fake gods and petty idols of the heart. I mean, consider how Christ fulfilled the law for you. by looking at him during his temptation in the wilderness. Just as Adam and Eve, our first parents, were tempted by Satan and failed to worship God alone but sought to make themselves like God and thus plunged all humanity into sin, so was Jesus tempted by Satan. But one by one, Jesus extinguishes the fiery darts of the devil's lies with the Word of God. And what is that final temptation? What does Satan tempt Jesus to do? Matthew tells us in Matthew 4, as he records that narrative, where the devil takes Jesus where? Up to a high mountain. Yes, a mountain. just like the mountain of Sinai, where God commanded his people to have no other gods before him. And Satan, up on that mountain, shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and all of their glory and treasures and wealth, and he says to Jesus, all of these I will give to you if you fall down and worship me. And Jesus turns to Satan and says, Those words come from Deuteronomy 6, 13 and 14. They are the very principle enshrined in this first commandment. Jesus, God the Son, gave glory to God the Father alone. And he did that by fulfilling the will of the Father, defeating Satan's lies, going to the cross to atone for the sins of his people. We see this again in his high priestly prayer in John 17. where we read when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, he prays and he says, Father, the hour has come, speaking of his crucifixion, glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you. And because of that, we now worship God through Jesus Christ, who is our Emmanuel, our God with us. All glory and laud and honor we ascribe to God, we ascribe to Jesus Christ. For, as Paul writes in Philippians 2, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. You see, Jesus kept this commandment perfectly so that united unto Him in faith, we can worship God with all our hearts as we follow Christ in faith. If you want to obey God and keep the commandments, worship Jesus Christ, the Christ of the commandments. Our wandering eyes do become so fixated on other things. other than the glory of the Father through the Son. And yet Jesus, when we look to him through his Spirit, leads us to fulfill this law of freedom. When we worship Christ, we worship God. And our hearts are renewed, our faith is built up, and it is strengthened. And that's why worship, especially with God's covenant people together in the church on the Lord's Day, is a form of covenant renewal, of renewing that relationship we have with God. when the people of Israel had entered Canaan and conquered it. At the end of the book of Joshua, Joshua, who was leading Israel, summons leaders from the tribes and he says to them those famous words that many of us know from Joshua 24. Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the river in Egypt and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and for my house, we will serve the Lord. Those words are the words of covenant renewal. It is something that God's people need regularly. And so we see these covenant renewals again and again throughout the Old Testament. In fact, the very worship of the temple was designed to be a service of covenant renewal, to remind the people that They belong to God, not because of anything they have done, purely by His grace, and thus He is their only God, and they ought to worship and serve Him. And now, as God's people, in the new administration of this covenant of grace, we are renewed in the gospel of Christ through word and sacraments. As we worship, we pray, we sing, we are reminding one another of all God's benefits towards us in Christ. And so if you want to obey God and keep the first commandment, worship Jesus. Let Christ minister to your heart His grace, His perfect fulfillment of this law as we are commanded to follow. So who receives your highest praise? Whom do you trust in above all others? Whom do you call upon for redemption and joy and hope and peace? And whom do you give thanks for all the blessings that you enjoy and all the providence and sustenance that God gives you, both in the hard times and the good times? May it be God through Christ alone, for you shall have no other gods before him. Let us pray. Father in heaven, indeed, we thank you for your word. We're thankful for this great truth that Jesus is a good and loving Savior, and that through him we might follow your law. And so, Father, I pray that you would command our hearts that you would encourage us through the grace of the gospel to give ourselves fully to Christ so that we might give ourselves fully to you, the great God, three in one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And in doing so, we would praise you forever. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.