For our scripture reading this morning, we'll be reading from Deuteronomy chapter 6, as we continue our series of messages in the Ten Commandments. Deuteronomy chapter 6, I read the first 15 verses. Here the Word of God. Now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord has commanded which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess, that you may fear the Lord your God to keep all his statutes and his commandments which I command you, you and your sons and your grandson, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. Therefore, hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you, a land flowing with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your soul. And these things which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. So it shall be when the Lord your God brings you into the land of which he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, houses full of all good things which you did not fill, hewn out wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, when you have eaten and are full. Then beware lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage. You shall fear the Lord your God and serve Him, and shall take oaths in His name. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the people who are all around you. For the Lord your God is a jealous God among you. Lest the anger of the Lord your God be aroused against you and destroy you from the face of the earth. May God That is a blessing to the reading of his word. Amen. There are many people who profess to believe in God. But what do they mean when they say they believe in God? Do they believe in the God of the Bible as one of many gods? Or is the God of the Bible the same God as the God of Islam, Mormonism, or some other God of the many religions of the world? Or is the God people believe in whatever they conceive of Him being in their minds, in their imaginations? Not long ago, I read of a minister of another denomination who said that the God of Islam, Allah, is the same God as the Christian. What a sad state of affairs it is that we've come this far down the road to apostasy. when it is supposed that the Christian minister will speak such lies. Allah is a God made up from the imagination of the so-called prophet Muhammad, whose private vision of an angel in a cave was nothing less than Satan appearing as an angel of light, as we read in 1 Corinthians. Allah is no God, and is nothing like the true and living God, who has revealed himself exclusively and only in the Old and New Testament scriptures, especially being revealed in Jesus Christ, who is the express image of God, God manifests in the flesh. It cannot be emphasized enough the importance of knowing the true and living God and having no other gods before him, instead of, or even in addition to, Everything in life, our worship, our relationships with others, how we understand nature and the way things work, flow. They flow from a person's understanding of who God is or in whom he or she puts his trust. It is the foundation to understanding truth and thus of first priority above all else. And this issue is the importance and primacy upon which God himself places. Because this is what he deals with in the very first commandment. And from this commandment, everything depends. Without the first commandment, the rest of the commandments become quite meaningless and more or less an ideological fancy. A ruling by a civil judge stating that the first commandment together with the other four commandments of the first table are unconstitutional would render the last six commandments a meaningless list of platitudes, an ideological fancy. But isn't that what is being sought by those who hate God? to seek to change history books, to eliminate him entirely from them, except as an object of superstition by those they claim to be ignorant people down through the ages. They claim we have evolved so far beyond the existence of a God. So they say. We, on the contrary as a nation, have devolved and are well on our way down the path heading back into the dark ages of paganism, such as in the days when Jesus and the apostles lived, and during the Middle Ages until the Reformation. So it is with this in mind we look now at the first commandment as it is revealed to us in Exodus chapter 20, verses 2 and 3, where we read I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. In verse two, we have what one might call a preamble to the commandment itself. And then verse three, we have the first commandment. We learned a couple of weeks ago that the preamble asserts the authority of the Lord over the children of Israel, not to mention all of mankind. and his right to impose his law upon them. However, there's another aspect to the preamble that was not mentioned because it was better fit to be mentioned today with our consideration of the first commandment. When God says in verse 2, I am the Lord your God, he is saying that not only is he the Lord who rules over the people who are his, he is stating that he is the only true eternal, self-existing God, which is what the word Lord means. The word Lord there is translated from the Hebrew. It's all in capital letters, if you'll notice in your Bibles. It's translated from the word Yahweh. Yahweh literally means I am. And with this name of God, we are told that the God who revealed Himself to Moses is the God who is the eternal, self-existing, self-sufficient, infinite God. And when Jesus told the Jewish leaders in John 8.58, saying, Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. He was telling them, and us also, that He was the Lord God. Yahweh God, who spoke to Moses from the burning bush in Exodus 3, which provoked the Jews to pick up stones to stone him for blasphemy. In their eyes, Jesus had violated the first commandment, which was punishable with death. And if the statement was not true, he would deserve to have been stoned to death. But what he said was true. And he proved it on many occasions with many irrefutable miracles and signs, including his resurrection from the dead. He is the incarnate Yahweh God, the second person of the triune Godhead manifest in the flesh. Thus we see that God asserts in the preamble who he is. And then he adds that he was the one who delivered them from their bondage in Egypt. By doing so, he reminded them that he is the only one who is due their soul worship and devotion. This connection is also made in Deuteronomy, where we read earlier in our scripture reading in verses 12 and 14 in chapter 6 of Deuteronomy. And again, we read of this connection in Psalm 81. 9 and 10 where the psalmist restates the first commandment, writing, quote, there shall be no foreign God among you, nor shall you worship any foreign God. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And thus we see the uniqueness of the Lord God and His exclusive covenant relation to His people that gives rise to what it says in the first commandment. Indeed, it is from what he states in the preamble in verse 2, which was restated in Psalm 81, that leads directly to the first commandment found in verse 3. In the very first commandment to the Ten Commandments, we learn that it is the first requirement to loving God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. We are commanded what God both prohibits and what he enjoins concerning himself, what we are to think of concerning him. The first commandment tells us that we are to have no other gods before him. Let us observe that this commandment is, first of all, a prohibition against having other gods before the Lord God. The word before carries with it the understanding of instead of, it has this understanding of instead of or in preference to, but it also can have the understanding of next to or beside, setting other gods beside him, equal to him. That would be also, you can understand it, in addition to. would be how I tend to understand it. It's clearer that way. So when he commands us to not have any other gods before him, he is telling us that we are not to have any gods instead of him or in addition to him. It's what the Israelites had done before he exiled them into Babylon. Not only did they embrace the Lord God, the Yahweh God, but they also embraced all of the other religions, the gods of the other nations, and this provoked them to anger. Thus we see in the first commandment that to have any other god instead of him or in addition to him would be idolatry. In the Heidelberg Catechism, question 95, we are given the definition of what idolatry is. In answer to the question, what is idolatry? We read, idolatry is to conceive or have something else in which to place our trust instead of or besides the one true God who has revealed himself in his word. This definition of idolatry is probably one of the best definitions that I have seen. This definition doesn't limit the definition of idolatry to just statues. made of wood and stone, or images, which are specifically forbidden in the second commandment. It embraces any and all ideas that may be conceived in our minds that is contrary to what God has revealed in his word concerning himself. Idolatry, as we are told, is not just to have an idea about who God is that is contrary to his revelation of himself and his word, but is also to place one's trust in that idea of God that is conceived by one's imagination. This is what the Lord was saying in the preamble to the Ten Commandments. He was saying that I am the one who delivered you from the oppressive hand of Pharaoh and from the house of bondage in the land of Egypt. I'm the one who deserves your trust. Paul makes the same argument in Romans 8, verse 32. He says, God delivered up His Son. He spared not His Son to die on the cross for our sins. How much more will He give us all things? That's the same question. And it should come to our minds the same answer. If He sent His Son to die on the cross and He didn't spare His Son, His only begotten Son, we must put our trust in Him, not in the things around us. Just as He earned His trust with the children of Israel. No other God did this for you. The Lord is saying, I am the only one in whom you can put your trust. Indeed, there is no other God in which man is to place his trust. No other God. Which leads us to another aspect to idolatry. God is prohibiting idolatry because to place one's trust in something or someone else instead of or in addition to the one true eternal God is to place your trust in nothing. Nothing at all. It's just an ideological notion that has no substance. It's not real. It doesn't exist. We learn this from 1 Corinthians 10, verses 19 and 20, where we read, what am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? That the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. And I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. Paul is saying there, an idol is nothing. Sacrificing to them is to have fellowship with demons. In other words, there's no other God to worship and in whom we are to place our trust, except the Lord, our God, Yahweh God. Further in Isaiah 45, 6, the Lord clearly states, there is none besides me. I am Yahweh. I am the Lord. There is no other. There is no other God. He is not one among many gods, because there are no other gods. There is no such thing as Allah. There's no such thing as the Hindu gods. There's no such thing as the Greek gods of old. There's only one God, the Lord our God, who refilled Himself in His Word. And Jesus Christ, the second person of the triune God, manifests in the flesh. Jesus is the revelation of God. Hebrews chapter 1 verse 2, 2 and 3. It says there that Jesus is the express image of God. He is God incarnate. And it is in this sense that the Lord God said in our scripture reading this morning in verse 4, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. The Lord our God is not a multitude of gods, nor is He a God that is conceived or made up in the image of man. He is the only one, one in the unity of three persons, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, as we learn more clearly from the New Testament. And so is it any wonder that immediately after declaring that the Lord is one, that he says in verse 5, you shall love the Lord your God, the Yahweh your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. This leads us to what we are enjoined to do in this first commandment. Again, we look to the Heidelberg Catechism to help us understand what is required of us in this commandment. Catechism 94 asks, what does God require in the first commandment? In the answer to this question, we learn what it means not to have any other gods or any other god instead of or in addition to the true and living Yahweh God. If you listen carefully, we'll find that there are eight actions that we are enjoined to obey this commandment in addition to what we are forbidden to do. This list will aid in promoting not only a correct view of the Lord God, but it will also serve to direct our lives in a way that gives evidence that we indeed desire to live our lives in obedience to God, to his glory alone. We read, that on peril of my soul's salvation I avoid and flee all idolatry, sorcery, enchantments, invocation of saints and of other creatures, and that I rightly acknowledge the only true God, trust in Him alone with all humility and patience, expect all good from Him only, and love and fear and honor Him with my whole heart so as to renounce all creatures than to do the least thing against his will." We are to avoid and flee, rightly acknowledge, trust, expect, love, fear, and honor God, and then to renounce. I'll comment briefly on each of these actions as they relate to us as believers in Jesus Christ. First, we are to avoid and flee all idolatry, sorcery, enchantments, invocation of saints, and of other creatures. In this action we see that these are things in which one might find comfort, spiritual or mental strength, and assurance. These are all forms of idolatry whereby a person seeks and runs to, looking to man-made ways, and are deceived into thinking that by looking into sorcery, enchantments, praying to saints or other creatures, they will be comforted, strengthened, and reassured that all is okay. None of these things will bring true comfort to the soul, give lasting strength of heart to endure, assurance of mind, but rather will only lead to fear, superstition, discouragement, and disappointment. Indeed, these are nothing less than demonology, and puts a person's soul in peril of eternal damnation. Therefore, these things must be avoided, and more than that, they are things from which we must flee. These forms of idolatry are nothing in which to place one's trust, which leads us to the second action on the list in the Catechism. Because an idol is nothing but what is conceived in man's sinful, rebellious mind, we are enjoined to look to the only true God, the Father of all comfort, our strength, which is from the Holy Spirit, and our assurance, which is secured by the Son, our Redeemer. We are to not only acknowledge Him privately, but we are to acknowledge Him publicly. Acknowledging the only true God is not accomplished with just the spoken word. Anybody can say they acknowledge Him. Acknowledging the only true God is accomplished by submitting to His will. Submitting our will our ideas and notions to Him, to His revelation of Himself alone. And by acknowledging the only true God, we will then be able to put our trust in Him alone, and not something or someone else. Flowing from acknowledging and trusting in the only true God, we are with all humility and patience to expect from Him, from Him alone, all good. That is, that He will work all things for our good according to His promise and His purposes, according to His character. We read in James 1.17, Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. If every good gift and every perfect gift comes from the Father, why would anyone expect to receive anything that is good from anyone or anything except the Lord God alone? And yet, isn't that what we do when we find ourselves in trouble, or struggling with sin, or we're in the midst of a trial in our lives? We seek good things from a fallen creation, and imperfect and corrupt creatures corrupt creatures rather than the Creator Himself, the Creator of all that is good. It gives us pause to ponder just how silly we are when we do not immediately go to the Lord our God for help. And thus we are to love the Lord, the Lord God, more than anything or anyone. We are to fear Him only, reverence Him alone, for He alone is the giver and taker of life. Let us remember that whatever man does to us, it's only because God has willed it so. As we love and fear God alone, so also we are to honor Him, honor Him above all others. We honor God by cleaving to Him, lifting His name up in all our words and in our deeds, proclaiming Him to be our rock, our strength, our refuge, and our salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord, directing and conducting our lives by faith in these truths. And then finally, we are enjoined by this commandment, by the first commandment, to renounce all creatures than to do the least thing against His will. This last action really summarizes what we are enjoined to do in the first commandment. It is better to renounce all loyalty, love, and life, life itself, than to do the least thing against God's will. We read in Acts chapter 5 that Peter and the other apostles renounced their loyalty to the Jewish leaders, to obey God rather than men, to proclaim the gospel of the resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 10 that we are to love Christ more than our fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, so much so that it would be better to hate them rather than to not be worthy of Christ. In Matthew chapter 5, it would be better to enter the kingdom of heaven maimed than to continue offending God and have our whole body be cast into hell. In conclusion, we have seen today that in loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we are first of all to have no other gods before him. That is, we are forbidden to conceive or have something else in which to place our trust instead of or in addition to the one true God who has revealed Himself in the Old and New Testament Scriptures. And then we are enjoined to avoid and flee all forms of idolatry, rightly acknowledge both privately and to others that the Lord God is the only true God. Trust in Him alone and none other. with all humility and patience, expect all good only from him who alone works all things for our good and gives all good and perfect gifts. To love him above all other persons and things, to reverence him, to honor him, lifting up his name in all that we say and do. And then finally, we are to love the Lord our God by renouncing all loyalty, love, and life to and for all creatures than to do the least thing against His will." Does it sound impossible to do? Yeah, it does. As we consider this commandment, we come to the realization that it's impossible for us to keep it perfectly, completely. We are by nature inclined to follow after idols, to place our trust in someone or something else other than the one true God. Calvin writes that we are by nature idol makers. It comes easy for us, but let us not despair. Rather, let us acknowledge to God our sin and failure to obey his commandment perfectly and with humble and contrite hearts. Look to Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins which he obtained for sinners like you and I once and for all time when he shed his precious blood on the cross to atone for our sins such as idolatry. Let us rest in full assurance in his work alone. For there is the forgiveness of sins and salvation in none other than in Jesus Christ, who not only died for our offenses, but who also was resurrected for our justification. Let us also not give up seeking to obey this commandment in this life, though perfect obedience will not be realized until the life to come. Let us seek The renewing strength of the Holy Spirit to strive more and more to perfect obedience and all humility and thankfulness. For in desiring to obey his commandment with a thankful heart, we evidence the new life that is in Christ alone, whereby we have been saved by grace alone through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, who is abundantly poured out upon us through Jesus Christ, our Lord. In obeying this command, how can we know? How can we know the Lord our God and rightly acknowledge Him? Unless we spend time in growing in our knowledge and understanding of who He is, as He has revealed Himself in His Word. How can we flee from that which is a false god and idol if we do not know well the living and true God? Do you know how to train bankers? Know the difference between a real dollar bill and a fake one? They give them a real one. They feel it, they touch it, they see it. They get to know it really well. They don't learn the false, the counterfeit bills. That's how they can tell the difference. So also in our lives, in our Christian lives, how can we know who God is? Know the difference between the real thing, the real God and a false God? if we do not know Him. If you do not spend much time in God's Word throughout the week, how can you ever expect to know the difference between an idol and the Lord our God? How can you grow to love Him if you do not know Him that well? How many of you would have gotten married to your wife or your husband, as the case may be, if you spent little or no time with them, if you're too busy to be with them? I dare say none of you would. And I include myself in that. So also with the Lord our God, who we are to love even more, to love Him with all our heart and soul, mind and strength. Beloved in the Lord, let us seek the strength that is from the Lord to be committed to knowing God more and more, so that we may more and more flee from idols and place our trust in the Lord our God through Jesus Christ alone, and love Him above all other things and persons, and thankfulness to Him for all that He has done for our redemption, our salvation, and the life everlasting through Jesus Christ. For raising us up together with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we may enjoy even now, by faith, a new life in Christ, as a new creation in Him, to His glory and honor forever. Amen. Let us pray. Most Gracious Heavenly Father, indeed we do give thanks to you. We thank you for your word. We pray, Lord, that you would apply your word to our hearts even now. Lord, that we might know you, the only true and living God. That we might grow in our faith and that we may grow in our knowledge and our love for you. That you would be honored. That we might fear you. That we might love you more and more each and every day. Lord, we know that we cannot do this on our own strength. We have not the faith to do so. But You, O Lord, give us that faith. Give us that strength. Give us that desire to know You, to honor You in our lives, both in our words and in our deeds. To Your glory and to Your honor. In Christ Jesus' name we pray.