All right, let's turn together to Exodus chapter 20. Again, we're gonna be looking at verses one through three. The title to our message this morning is The Serpent and the First Word, and let me just draw your attention to this. This is the evangelical use of the first commandment. Let's look at Exodus chapter 20, starting in verse one. And God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. Let's pray. Father, the psalmist's prayer seems most appropriate this morning that you would open our eyes to see wonderful things from your law. Pray that you would do this for Christ's sake by the power of your spirit to your glory, amen. All right, you may be seated. Now we looked at this commandment a couple of weeks ago. And we discovered that this God that we are to worship is not a generic God. He's not just any God, but He's the triune God. Scripture teaches us that there is one living and true God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. These three are one God. They are the same in substance and equal in power and in glory. So what we learned was that to obey the first commandment, we must worship the Trinity. Now, this morning, my aim is to apply the evangelical use of the first commandment. And we talked about that quite a while ago. Remember, there are multiple uses for things. There are multiple uses for a knife, right? You can cook with it. You can cut with it. You can carve with it. Likewise, there are uses, three uses of biblical law. And the evangelical use is to use the law in such a way where we see the pollution and corruption of our sinful nature, Romans 3.20, so that we would flee to Christ. So the law acts as a mirror. showing us the deformity of our soul, how ruined we are, so that we would behold how much we are bound to Christ for his fulfilling the law for us and for standing in its place for us as our curse. So my prayer this morning is that the law would increase the knowledge of our sin so that the grace of Jesus Christ would abound all the more. That's where we're going. So let's look then at our exposition. Look at verse one, how Yahweh addresses Israel from the mountain. Sorry, verse two. I am the Lord your God. who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Now, if you're new to this series this morning, the first thing that you have to understand is that Israel's being delivered from Egypt is a blueprint, a type, a pattern that is pointing to our salvation. Israel being saved from Egyptian slavery points to our being saved. from slavery to sin. Apostle Paul makes this clear in 1 Corinthians 10.6. These things took place as examples, tupas for us. That means that this historical event that we're looking at right now was also a prophecy in picture form for us. When Israel was delivered through the Red Sea, and Pharaoh and all of his army was crushed, and Israel was delivered up out of the sea on their way to the promised land. That is a picture of our salvation. Colossians 1 16 says that we have been delivered from the domain of darkness, from that life in Egypt back there, and we have been brought into the kingdom of his beloved son. So that's why we are also bound to keep these commandments. Verse 2 says, I am the Lord, your God. So we're, this is covenantal language. This is language of the covenant of grace. God is our God. God is our Redeemer. We are bound to keep His commandments. So what does the first commandment say? Verse three, you shall have no other gods before me. Each one of the commandments is going to teach us some particular thing about our worship. This commandment teaches us that our worship of God must be exclusive. No other god is allowed to be worshiped. Husbands are only to have one wife. Israel was to have only one God, Jehovah, and no other gods. I think one thing that we need to just pause here though for a moment, we need to ask the very kind of maybe not so obvious question, what is a God? I imagine there might be some people in here this morning who say, well, I don't have a problem with this because I don't have a God. What is a God though? Children, boys and girls, think hard with me for a second. What is a God? A God is whatever controls your life. In her family devotional on the shorter catechism, Star Mead says, whatever is most important to a person, Is that person's God? Do you have something that's most important to you? Everybody says yes. Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, whatever, everybody has something that's most important to them. That's your God. Everybody has a God because everybody loves something, everybody lives for something, everybody dreams about something. So here it is, whatever your heart loves the most or worships the most is your God. And God is saying here, love me the most, worship me the most with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and give that devotion to none other. That's what's required. Now this was an incredible challenge for Israel as they came up out of Egypt because the Egyptian culture was swarming with gods just like ours. Egyptian culture was swarming with gods. We saw this during the plagues, didn't we? So there was the, if you remember, there was the transgender spirit god, Hopi, who was a bearded man with breasts. Not much has changed today. There was the frog princess, the goddess Heket, who was depicted as a human female with a frog's head. There was the incestuous bisexual Geb, who had children with his sister, raped his mother, and get this, he was depicted as having a goose on his head. I think I hate that one the most. Now, Why is this important to rehearse? Because we are largely a product of our culture. Meaning that the gods of culture control culture. For years, Israel was influenced by the sexual immorality of Egypt, Leviticus 18 says, and they were warned as they're about to enter the promised land that they were not to engage in that same sexual immorality lest they also be thrown out of the land. Their allegiance was to change, their culture was to change because their God was changing. The gods of our culture influence us. So loved ones, how are you being influenced? What's controlling us? Which God chiefly controlled Egypt? Which God held the greatest influence over Israel when they stood right at this mountain at this moment? It was the serpent. Consider two clues. to demonstrate that the serpent was Egypt's chief God. Clue number one, the sign of the serpent. Clue number one, the sign of the serpent. Please turn with me to Exodus chapter four. This was before Moses had gone back to Egypt. God was commissioning him on Mount Horeb, right here at this very mountain. And we look at verse one in Exodus chapter four. Moses was afraid, of course, that the Israelites were not going to believe him. Then Moses answered, but behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, the Lord did not appear to you. The Lord said to him, what is in your hand? He said, a staff. And he said, throw it on the ground. So he threw it on the ground and it became a serpent and Moses ran from it. But the Lord said to Moses, put out your hand and catch it by the tail. So he put out his hand and caught it and it became a staff in his hand. Okay, stop, now that's a sign. That's a sign of what already took place and what's going to take place. Remember that back in chapter two, Pharaoh had tried to kill Moses. And it said that Moses, in verse 15, fled from Pharaoh. Here, Moses flees from the serpent. This is a word play in the Hebrew. Moses fled from Pharaoh and now he's fleeing from the serpent. But this illusion here is reinforced when God tells him to put out your hand and grab the serpent by the tail. What happens? The serpent is defeated and it turns back to a dead stick. Now how does God deliver Israel? By stretching out his mighty right hand. Exodus 7-5, the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt. Over and again, we hear of God defeating Egypt by his mighty right hand. This sign is a clue that the serpent is Egypt's chief God. Now, theologically, this is easy to see, right? I mean, who is at enmity with the seed of the woman? The seed of the serpent, Genesis 3.15, right? So the exodus is a battle between the serpent God and he who would be born of a virgin. Let's look at clue number two, which is the fiery serpents. Clue number two, the fiery serpents. Please turn with me to Numbers 21. Now here, the Israelites are in the wilderness. They're traveling to the promised land. And we see this episode beginning in verse four. For about Hor, they set out by the way to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water and we loathe this worthless food. Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people so that many people of Israel died. Now Israel, like several times before this, loathes the fact that they ever left Egypt, and they cast their blame upon God. And so God here basically says, okay, you wanna go back to Egypt? Here you go. And then what did he release? fiery serpents, serpents that abused them, poisoned them, killed them. God could have punished them in any other way, but he punished them with what they asked for. He released the God of Egypt upon them, these fiery serpents. Now, how does this help us to understand the first commandment? Because it shows us Which God is the chief opponent of Yahweh? Exactly, you say. Well, I didn't need to go through all that. It's the serpent. Everybody knows it's the serpent. But not so fast. Let's turn to Genesis 3 and see mankind's first encounter with the serpent. Genesis chapter 3. Here we see the serpent tempting Eve But who was the serpent tempting Eve to worship? After Eve tells him that they would die, fate, the forbidden fruit, look at what the serpent tells her in verse four. Genesis three, verse four. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Now, question, who did the serpent want Eve to worship? Herself. Serpent worship is self-worship. Satan is basically saying, if you follow my advice, you can be your own God. You know, I went to the Satanic Temple's website this week, and on the Satanic Temple's website, they have seven tenets of Satanism. Do you know that not one of them suggests to worship Satan? Do you know who it does say to worship? Tenet number three. One's own body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone. You don't have to take orders from anybody. Nobody is your master. You're your own master. You set your own rules. You're under obligation to no one except yourself. Serpent worship is self-worship. That's the chief God in Egypt. That's the chief God today. So let's look at then our doctrine. This is your big idea. The chief God that opposes the first commandment is the God of self. Chief God that opposes the first commandment is the God of self, and the proofs for this are especially seen in Jesus' teaching. Luke chapter nine, 23 and 24, he said to everyone, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me, for whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. Matthew 10, 38, whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. I think that's an interesting line there. What does the cross represent? Death, it's an instrument of execution. So to come to Christ means that you must put yourself, your self-worship to death. Luke 14, 26, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Anyone who loves his own life more than Jesus is not a disciple of Jesus. How does the God of self particularly break the first commandment? Well, I would just commend to you Larger Catechism question 105. It provides a long list of sins. We're just going to take a sample of it here to see how self-worship is the root of every sin. We're gonna see this in three ways, in our head, in our hearts, and in our hands. So first of all, self-worship in our heads, what we believe. Self-worship in our heads. Wrong beliefs about God actually break the first commandment. What you believe about God can be a breaking of the first commandment. So take, for instance, atheism, the denying that there is any God, that breaks the first commandment. I wonder if there's any atheists that are here today. Do you know what the scripture says about you? Psalm chapter 14 verse one says, the fool says in his heart, there is no God, they are corrupt, they do abominable deeds. That last bit is so important. Do you realize that you're not an atheist for intellectual reasons mainly, but you're an atheist because you love to worship your own pleasure, your own autonomy, your own right, as Frank Sinatra would say, to do it your own way. but you can never have pleasure apart from the living God. Your autonomy will not stand on the day God appointed for you for judgment. But there's also polytheism. Polytheism is the worship of many gods. Do you realize that Idaho has the second largest polytheistic population in the nation? Mormonism. I wonder if there are any Mormons listening. Dear friend, do your research. Mormonism is based on the belief that there are many gods, that one day, if you're good enough, you can be your own God. That's damnable. Isaiah 45, five, I am the Lord and there is no other besides me, there is no God. Exodus 20, 22, whoever sacrifices to any God other than the Lord God shall be devoted to destruction. But there's also heresies about the true God. that lie about God that break the first commandment. Arianism, for example, denies that Jesus Christ is true God. Jehovah's Witnesses represent Arianism today. I wonder if there's any JWs that are listening to this. Dear friend, if Jesus is not the true God, if he's not Jehovah himself, then you must save yourself. You must become your own God. If you think that Jesus was created, he can't save you. Scripture says in Psalm 49 7, truly no man can ransom another or give to God the price of his life. Jesus said, if you don't believe that I am he, if you don't believe that I am Jehovah, you'll die in your sins. But there are other forms of self-worship in the head that genuine Christians can commit. Willful ignorance of God violates the first commandment. If you're just too lazy to learn about God. I'm not talking about as we grow in our knowledge. I mean, you know what? The knowledge of God is really not worth it to me. I'm not gonna pursue him. That slothfulness is saying that you care more about your own comfort than the knowledge of God. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Or if you have unworthy thoughts about God. Perhaps you blame God for things not working out the way that you think that they should go. But when you blame God like that, you're demanding that he worship and serve you, your whims, your desires. So those are just some ways that we can break the first commandment with our heads. Secondly, let's look at self-worship in our hearts. self-worship in our hearts, you realize that wrong affections about God break the first commandment. Wrong affections about God break the first commandment. So consider, are you weary of God? Weariness of God is violation of the first commandment. Puritan William Perkins talks about the danger of God becoming weary or irksome to you. Meaning that you are annoyed at him, you're irritated by him, you're bored with God. Children, boys and girls, is it irksome for you to be here to worship the Lord? Would you come if your parents didn't force you? Maybe you're being lovingly forced. Prayerlessness. is a sign of God being irksome to you. Isaiah 43, 22, yet you did not call upon me, prayer, O Jacob, but you have become weary of me. Loved ones, have you become weary of God in your prayer life? Next, failing to fear the Lord. breaks the first commandment. We always fear something. This is the not whether but which rule. It's not whether you fear, but what you fear. It's election season right now in clown world, and it's so easy to be afraid of what's happening, isn't it? But if we fear those things, if we fear those circumstances more than God, we are putting another God above God. We're fearing those things at best, at best, that can kill the body, but can't throw the body and soul into hell. Next, trusting God, not trusting God, or trusting in other things more than Him, breaks the first commandment. Loved ones, when we question the truth of God's promises, we're tempting God. The psalmist blamed Israel's apostasy on their not believing him. Psalm 78, 21 and 22, his anger rose against Israel because they did not believe in God and they did not trust in his saving power. Do you trust God with everything? Next is incorrigibleness. Incorrigibleness, which means refusing to be corrected by God. This breaks the first commandment. Jeremiah 5.3, they refuse to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock. They have refused to repent. Why would a person refuse to repent? Because they're worshiping their own desires more than God. Self-worship. Next, self-righteousness breaks the first commandment. When you become proud of your possessions or gifts or you think that you're not like that stupid person over there. You've imagined that it's your own might and your own power that has made you who you are. 1 Corinthians 4, 7, what do you have that you did not receive? If then you have received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? Are you walking in self-righteousness towards others? Finally here, lukewarmness or deadness in the things of God. Have you put out your fire and your passion for God? Remember what Christ said to the Laodicean church, so because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. Just think for a moment, loved ones, if you don't enjoy the triune God here, why do you think that you would ever enjoy him in heaven? These are some ways that we can break the first commandment with our hearts. The third category is the God of self in our hands. The God of self in our hands. Wrong behavior is a breaking of the first commandment. Loved one's drunkenness violates the first commandment. Ephesians 5.18, do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. It's pitting drunkenness against being filled with God. Drunkenness is seeking after that feeling of intoxication, that euphoria, rather than God. Dear friends, is that you? Have you traded out God for alcohol? All forms of sexual immorality violate the first commandment. Who does your computer say that you worship when no one's looking? Do you realize that pornography and sex outside of marriage is self-worship? It's telling God that you make your own rules when it comes to your body. That's Satanism. It's one of the first sins here listed in Galatians 5.19 that says those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. What about covetousness or greed? Are you greedy, dear friend? Jesus said you cannot serve God and money. And maybe you're not greedy, maybe you're like most of us that we're just addicted to comfort. Do you realize that the God of comfort is the sin that Americans are perhaps most susceptible to? Philippians 3.19, Paul says, this is the God of their belly, meaning whatever brings comfort to our flesh is their God. Don't you realize how much we have to lose if we stand up for righteousness? We go home, we have 107 inch TV screens and refrigerators and beds and homes and cars and air conditioning and good reputations at work. Are we letting those things choke out the word? So we care more about our comfort than our God. Who is our household God, oh Israel? Are we raising our families around that family altar of God and His Word and Christ and His Spirit, or are we raising our children to love the things of the world? John said, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. These are some ways that we can break the first commandment with our hands. In sum, all sin is self-worship. All sin breaks the first commandment. So that's our doctrine, that the chief God that opposes the first commandment is the God of self. So let's apply this then. Remember here, that the evangelical use of the law is to help us discover our sin. so that we can see how much we are bound to Christ for his fulfilling the law and enduring the curse in our stead. So let's see how that happens. Let's turn back to Numbers 21. I want you to see how God dealt with Israel's sin. Now remember that the Lord, the people rejected the Lord once again, we read halfway through verse five, why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? God had become irksome. For there is no food, no water, and we loathe this worthless food. Do you remember what this food was that they were being given? Whose manna? They were given manna for 40 years. This was called angel's food in Psalm 78. It's the supernatural bread that God gave them every single day except the Sabbath. Here God was lovingly providing for them. He was making sure their clothing didn't wear out. He was protecting them from their enemies. He was giving them water from the rock and he was giving them these honey wafers from heaven and they spit it back in his face. Instead of loving and serving him, they thought only of themselves. How self-centered and ungrateful and wicked they were. Well, loved ones, do you see what's happening here? The Holy Spirit is tricking us. One author puts it like this. Let me stop. Isn't that what you feel when you read these passages again and again and again? Man, those Israelites were stupid. Right? Listen to this quote. The storyteller lures readers in to pass judgment and shake their heads at the Israelites. But sooner or later, readers get the impression that they are looking into a mirror. Isn't that what James says? That as we look into the word, we're looking into the perfect mirror of God's word. Loved ones, as we look at Israel, we see ourselves. This is how we act towards God. So what happens next? Verse six, God sends them fiery servants. Then the Lord sent fiery servants among the people, and they bit the people. Stop. These bites were extremely painful. They were fiery snakes. One author says that their venom would cause their blood to burn, their skin to swell up, and their faces to become deformed. They were struck with such a thirst that they could not quench and a pain that they could not cure. What does this represent? The misery of sin. We were bit by the serpent in the garden and we live our lives murmuring against God. And what do these things bring? Misery. All of our sins are like so many snake bites, terrorizing us, haunting our consciences, ruining our relationships and alienating us from God. But the worst thing is, is that these snake bites, this sin brings death. End of verse six, many people of Israel died. This bite could not be cured by human invention and so it is with sin. Romans 5.12, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all men sinned. Or Romans 6.23, the wages of sin is death. The crisis of your life, loved ones, is that you sin every day. It doesn't matter. The crisis of your life is not how much you have in your bank account. It's not that you have some enemy. It's not that you have some sickness in your family. The crisis is sin. We cannot cure ourselves. The violations of the first commandment are not just mistakes, they are damnable crimes against a holy God. These Israelites died a physical death, but sin ends in spiritual death. So what happens next? Look at verse seven. And the people came to Moses and said, we have sinned. For we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that he takes away the serpents from us. Oh, how beautiful this is. They're confessing their sin to the Lord. They're asking, Lord, please heal us. So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. What a strange remedy. Moses fashioned a serpent. Moses, take that one animal that is the most cursed animal in all creation and make it a sign of salvation. Most cursed? Yes. Genesis 3.14, because you have done this, God said to the serpent, cursed are you above all livestock, above all the beasts of the field. Fashion the most cursed thing. And this thing was made out of bronze. An alloy, a mixture of copper and tin. It had no majesty or beauty for Israel to desire it. It was to be fastened to a pole and lifted up so that whoever looked to it would live. Why did God graciously and lovingly cure their sin like this, like this? Why indeed? Children, boys and girls, I hope that you see what this serpent represents. Who does it represent? Christ, Christ. Oh, think how strange this scene is that points to our Redeemer, right? First of all, this serpent was bronze, it was an alloy, so Christ, in a manner of speaking, was true God and true man, united in one person forever. The word made flesh to dwell among us. The bronze serpent wasn't made of gold. He was made much lower. Christ emptied himself. He became a servant, form of a servant for our sakes. The Son of God came down from heaven because we were poisoned. And he humiliated himself by condescending and uniting himself to a human nature. Loved ones, would you unite yourself to an ant? or some scorpion or some loathsome thing? No, but oh God, he took on flesh, he united himself to a human being for our sakes. Secondly, this serpent, as we said, is the most cursed of all creatures. That's precisely what happened to Jesus. Jesus became the most cursed of all beings in our place. Galatians 3.13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who's hanging on a tree. Loved ones, some of you are struggling and suffering through things, and someone might say to you, yeah, but think of Jesus, how he suffered. And you might say, yeah, but he was God. He didn't really suffer. Jesus suffered more than the accumulated human beings of all time because he took the infinite wrath of God upon himself. He took hell on that cross. He became the most cursed thing imaginable. You realize that when Jesus went to the cross, he paid for our past and our present and our future sins. Jesus paid for sins that you haven't even committed yet. We read that big long list of the law and you're thinking, oh man, I'm so bad, I'm so bad. You don't know how bad you are. You haven't even committed your last sin yet. You're still racking them up like a big pile. Jesus died for all of them. Thirdly, the serpent in the wilderness was lifted up so that all who looked upon him would live, so it is with Christ. This is the exact picture that John brings up in John 3, 14. And as Moses lifted up the serpent of the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. Loved ones, Our prize here is so much greater than we see here in Numbers 21. They were only saved from physical death. We, when we look to Christ on the cross by faith, we are saved from spiritual, eternal, everlasting, world without end death. They were brought back to life. We've been given everlasting life with God and with his true son, Christ. So I wanna address two groups as we close, two groups. The first group is to the unrepentant sinner, to those who are not Christians. You have been bitten by a serpent and you are dying. That's what's wrong with you. Don't you wake up in the morning saying, what's wrong with me? This is what's wrong with you, you've been poisoned by sin. And that terror in your conscience, that feeling that I'm guilty, I can't do enough, I can't scrub hard enough to get clean, that's because you can never cure yourself. You're terribly afraid of death, you're terribly afraid of the judgment on the last day. Why would you not look to Christ? Why would you not look to the cross and live? How foolish it would have been for those Israelites who got bit by a snake and they know that their friend just got cured by looking to the serpent and they're not, I'm not gonna look, I'm not gonna look. Look to Christ. Be saved. The necessity of faith is absolute. Jesus said, whoever believes, John said, John 3, 18, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. Friends, stop worshiping yourself. Things will not improve for you. You cannot make your poison disappear. Only Christ can heal you. That's why God the Father sent him into the world. Turn to him, lay down your gods, run from the serpent, run to Christ. Finally, I want to address the brokenhearted saint. Dear Christian, you are a loved one of God. That exercise of going through all those sins, God is not up there rubbing his hands saying, oh, I hope they feel really bad about themselves. God is up there wanting you to feel the weight of your sin so that you can see how much the grace of God has abounded towards you, how he has freely given you the gift of heaven, the greatest gift, his son. We still have so much sin remaining. We haven't even scratched the surface. Our pollution and corruption is legion, but there's no reason to despair. Law came to increase the trespass, but where the trespass increased, grace abounded all the more. Look up as the Israelites did, look to Christ on the cross, he'll suck that poison out. Imagine being one of those Israelites right now, your blood is burning, your arms and your legs are swelling, you're gasping for breath, and you look to that serpent and you're healed instantly. Is that a time for mourning and despair? No, you're jumping up and down. I'm saved, I'm saved. That it is for you. Christ has saved you. You're bound to him. You've now been shown how much he has done for you, how much he has planned from all eternity to provide for your corruption and your pollution. He's already removed the curse from our lives. That's past tense. Now next week, God willing, we're gonna see how this law positively shows us how to live for God. But you need to realize right now, as a Christian, there's no more curse. There's no more judgment. There's no more dread. God the Father is your Father by covenant. Jesus the Redeemer is your Redeemer by covenant. The Holy Spirit Comforter is your Comforter by covenant. Look and live, look and live. Dear Father, we look to your son now. Yes, Lord, we have seen the corruption of our own hearts. Yes, we have seen how polluted we are. And Lord, we say yes, we see how much more we are bound to your son for his becoming the most cursed object in all the universe. We thank you, God. Help us now to put to death self. Remind us, Lord, of this message this week as we lash out against our children or against our spouse, that that God of self would rise up again, Lord, that we would seek to put it to death, that we would look to Christ, that we would be empowered to lead new lives even as he rose from the dead. For we pray it in his name, amen.