You shall have no other gods before me is the first commandment. Today, we're going to look at two parts of what will be. I'm going to try to do each commandment in two sermons because I think there's more to them than meets the eye at a simple reading. Today, we're going to look at the first two parts. What does the first commandment require? And then what does the first commandment forbid? What does the first commandment require? And then what does the first commandment forbid? Next week, Lord willing, we'll look at the first commandment in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. How did our Lord Jesus Christ live out the first commandment? And then second of all, how does the New Testament treat the first commandment? The very first thing that God says to mankind, especially to his redeemed people, is you shall have no other gods before me. What does this commandment require? And why does God require it? We're going to look at two aspects here. First of all, what is God asking of us in this commandment? And then why is He asking it? What is God's motivation? It's not simply a bare naked rule, do this or don't do this. But there's reasons why God does what He does. And there's reasons that we can look at in Scripture. The first thing is God requires, the first commandment requires that God who has revealed Himself in the Bible and supremely in Jesus Christ, that He is to be our God, that He is to be your God. He is to be the only God of our lives. Nothing else is to be God to you or to me. God alone is to be your only God. He is to be first in your heart. He is to be the focal point of your life. He's to be the reference point of your life. When a navigator wants to see where he is, he takes reference by certain fixed points in the universe whereby he might know where he is upon the ocean or where he is in space. And the fixed point of your universe is to be Almighty God. Who is the supreme desire of your heart? Who do you want to please at the end of the day? Who is the first love of your heart? Whose smile do you desire? And whose frown do you dread? Who's to have the first and final say about anything in your life? God Himself is alone to be the one who ultimately determines what is important for you. If He's your reference point, if He's my reference point, then He alone has the final say on everything. What are my goals to be? What should my aspirations be? What should my dreams be? What should my desires be? What should be my values? To hear people say, to hear finite creatures say, well these are my personal values. Who cares? You're measuring yourself by yourself. You have no means of measurement. We're not to come up with our own personal values. God has given us his eternal values. God has said what's good and what's bad, what's right and what's wrong. This idea of personal choice in everything. You can call your Serial healthy choice and people think I'm like a little God. I make my own decisions I make my own personal values. We have certain values Well God's the ultimate one who says which values are good and which values are bad Which values are right and which values are terribly wrong? The God of the Bible and the God of our Lord Jesus Christ is to be our only God no one else nothing else He's one of a kind He's holy Holy, holy. Please turn to Isaiah chapter 6 for a moment to review a passage that by God's grace we have sought to make common in this church, but it's good to review what we already know. A passage in the Old Testament which makes very clear that God is not like anything or anyone else. There's nothing in this planet. There's nothing in the cosmos. There's nothing else that exists like God. Isaiah 6, verses 1-3, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. The idea of God sitting on a throne is symbolic of His sovereignty. He is a reigning king. The idea of a train of his robe, the robes of a king or a queen are meant to show something of their majesty, something of their greatness. His robe wasn't just six feet long, it wasn't just 16 feet long. The train of his robes wound around the bottom of the throne and completely filled up the temple. Now this is obviously figurative language. The idea is that God is the king above all kings of the earth and his majesty outshines all the majesties of all the kings upon the earth. Above him stood the seraphim, these angelic creatures. Each had six wings. With two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another." So you have the angels calling back in an antiphonal chorus. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. God's not just holy to the nominative degree. He's not just holy, holy to the comparative degree. We'd say holier. God is holy, holy, holy to the superlative degree, meaning there's no one more holy than God. God is holy to the incomparable degree. God's preeminent attribute is holiness. Everything else about God emanate like from the spokes of a wheel. God's love is holy love. God's wisdom is holy wisdom. God's justice is holy justice. God's goodness is holy goodness. No other attribute of God is elevated to the third degree in Scripture as is His holiness. God is holy, holy, holy. He's set apart. There's nothing or no one else like God. To be holy in the Bible means initially to be set apart. And the idea of purity comes from the fact that believers are to be set apart from their old lifestyle, set apart from sin, and dedicated wholly to the Lord. Well, the Lord says, I'm set apart from all of my creation. Nothing in the universe is an exact parallel to me. You have nothing else in your life that you can use to say, well, he's kind of like God. Well, no, I'm wholly other. I'm not just holy. I'm not just holy, holy. I'm holy unlike anything else you've ever imagined. I'm so set apart from sin. There is no one else like God. In Isaiah chapter 43, if you'll turn later in the same book, there's another passage here which deals with the question of that we're supposed to make God number one in our hearts. There is no other God. Isaiah 43, verses 10 through 13. The last several dozen chapters of the book of Isaiah have to do with God's calling a court in heaven. And He's calling angels to come and be witnesses in court. He's calling the four winds. He's calling the uttermost places in the world. Come, I want you to watch. I am going to be the prosecuting attorney and the judge. And now I am calling my people, Israel, before me. And you will have to take an account. And this is the cosmic judgment, so to speak. And here in chapter 43, verses 10 through 13, God says, you are my witnesses, declares the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me, no God was formed, nor shall there be any after me. In other words, there was not a God before the one true God, and there's never going to be another God, so to speak. There is only one true and living God. I am I. I am the Lord, and besides me there is no Saviour. I declared and saved and proclaimed when there was no strange God among you. And you are my witnesses, declares the Lord, and I am God. Also henceforth I am He. There is none who can deliver from my hand. I work and who can turn it back. I am the only God, is what he's saying. So the reason why he gives us as the very first command is because he is the only God and we are to make God and God alone to be God in our life. The first command requires that we have no other God or gods. with a small g, as number one in our hearts. Well, then it begs the question, so why does God go there? Why does God say, you shall have no other gods before me? He gives four reasons in Scripture. I believe there's at least four reasons why God says, you shall have no other gods before me. The first one is because God alone deserves to be glorified and treated in this fashion. God alone deserves to be number one in our hearts. One of the first things that sin did in ruining this planet was to ruin our perceptions of reality. And as a result of what sin has done and is still doing, people don't value things rightly. The Apostle Paul has to remind the Corinthians that until the Spirit of God works in a sinner's heart, they undervalue spiritual truths. For example, the Bible says that We don't rightly appraise things until the Spirit of God helps us, because we're like a biased jeweler who you bring in a diamond and he looks at this very valuable diamond, but because he hates you, he gives a low estimate of the value of this diamond. And it says, but when the Spirit of God works in your heart, for the first time you can give a true appraisal to the worth of something. The things of the Spirit of God are foolish to the natural man. But we'd say they're stupid. That's stupid that you sing in church. It's stupid that you sing to a God that you can't see. It's stupid that you profess to love the Lord Jesus Christ. This is all rather stupid and unimportant to me. That's how a sinner thinks. And that's because of what sin has done to him. When God works in that person's heart, for the first time they begin to have the capacity. They begin to have the capacity, not until we get to heaven will we have our full capacity of seeing the worth of God and the things of God. But, because God is God, it's right and appropriate that He and no one but He should have this first place in our hearts, first place in our lives, that He should sit upon the throne of our hearts. We sometimes will close with a portion of the doxology or section of praise that Paul ends Romans 11 with. Paul from Romans 1 until the end of chapter 11 has been given a long sustained argument on God's eternal plan of salvation. And then he ends chapter 11 by just being overwhelmed himself and he's through his, I think Tertius was the secretary who wrote for Paul, Romans as Paul dictated it. And he says, who has ever known the mind of the Lord that he should be his counselor? To whom is the Lord given that you should be required? The Lord would want repayment. Or I got that vice versa. Who has ever given to God that God should pay him back? And then he says, for from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the honor and glory forever. Everything came from God. God sustains the universe by His Word at this very moment. God sustains the atoms of your body staying together. God sustains your life. He gives you your next breath. He causes your autonomic nervous system to work. He causes your heart and lungs to function while you're asleep or napping or unconscious. God holds all things together. God is the one who sent His Son, Lord Jesus Christ. God is the one who entered into a covenant with His Son before the beginning of time to come and rescue a people from this fallen planet. It's only right that God have the first place. For from Him, and through Him, or by His enablement, and to Him are all things. It would be sin, it would be gross not to give God the first place because that's what He deserves by function of who He is and all that He has done. Now, a second reason comes close to that is because we should do it because it's true. This really happened. God really exists. There really is a God. This is not a fairy tale. You're not going to wake up, so to speak, from this and discover, oh, is this something I was dreaming one day? God really exists. Details of the Bible about what has happened in human history, especially as it concerns God's plan of salvation and the giving of his son. This all really happened. He deserves the first place in our life. Now, when we say something is true, what do we mean? Pontius Pilate asked the Lord Jesus Christ, what is truth? And different people try to answer that. Today we live in a culture which has so devolved that people do not believe anything such as truth exists anymore. Truth is a construct that you put on a reality. Truth is something that you give to a situation. But there is no absolute or overriding or universal truth any longer. Man in his wisdom has become utter fool, and so we no longer believe that absolute truth exists. It may be true for me, but it's not true for you. It may be true for certain people that if they want to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center, that's a good thing for them, even though it's not a good thing for the people who were in the World Trade Center, or a good thing for us, but that was just their thing, and so we have to allow these things to be different functions of reality. That's the foolishness we have come to in our culture today. But in the Bible, truth is what corresponds to reality. A philosopher would call it the correspondence theory of truth. For anything to be true, according to the Bible, it has to correspond to reality. Napoleon Bonaparte was not the first president of the United States of America. Abraham Lincoln was not a world-class pole vaulter. You can posit that. You can say that. But it's not coterminous with reality. It's not true in the Bible sense. For something to be true in the Bible, it has to be the way that God has really structured reality. There is such a thing as a principle of gravity. You jump out of an airplane at 10,000 feet without a parachute and you will land. And you will make a small crater. This is a reality. You cannot say, I choose to disbelieve in the principle of gravity. Fine. It's a reality whether you choose to disbelieve it or not. Well, who judges? Who has the final say so? What's real? God does. And God says, whatever makes a claim to be true must correspond to how I've made reality. You can go outside today and say, there is no such thing as rain. Reality will prove you to be wrong. your statement to be false. I don't believe there is such a thing as a sun. Well, the sun, as we call it, comes up and people see it and they go, well, I guess you're wrong. Your view of reality is false. Whatever claims to be true must correspond to reality. And God really exists and He is really worthy of our first place in our hearts. We've just read from Isaiah 43, 10 through 13, and the thing that God's kept drilling into their heads is, I, I really exist. I'm really God. I'm really your God. I do these things. I tell you what's going to happen before it happens. No other God can do this. There was no God before me. There's no God coming after me. I really exist. This is true to reality. A third point about why God tells us that he should be number one, not only because he deserves it and not only because it's true, but the third reason is, is because God says, I want you to have me as number one in your heart because I love you with a holy jealousy. I love you with a holy jealousy. If I have redeemed you and made you one of mine, I love you with a holy jealousy. Now, two things. We may be a little weak in our understanding what Scripture says, but the Bible, it says in both Testaments that God is betrothed to his people. In the Old Testament, God says, I am the bridegroom and Israel is my bride. In the New Testament, it's not, are you a member of the nation state of Israel, which is about to be obliterated in AD 70, but the question is, are you a member of the church of Jesus Christ? Whether you're Jew or Gentile, have you taken Jesus Christ to be your Savior and Lord? If you have, you are now part of the church. In the New Testament, Christ is the bridegroom and the church is people from whatever background they come from. The church is his bride. Okay? And God says in both Testaments, I love my people with a holy love and a holy jealousy. We're not used, many times, to thinking about jealousy in a positive way. But if you stop and think about it, commonsensically, there is a very real sense in which jealousy is a good thing. To see your spouse with another person, giving their love and affection to that other person, you kind of go, well, that's just their thing. They're not into monogamous relationships. That shows what sin has done to your heart and mind and shows what sin has done to your spouses. But it's a wrong take on reality. God says that this love I have for you is an exclusive love. I'm not choosing the pagans of the world. I'm not choosing the unrepentant. I'm choosing my people. And I will be your God and you will be my people. And I am a jealous God. Not insanely jealous. Not a God who goes off in weird ways upon people for no reason. We know such a thing as the green-eyed monster of sinful jealousy, where a person has vain imaginations. But God knows us dead to rights. He knows exactly what's going on in our hearts. And if we have someone else or something else as first in our heart, if we are, to use the Bible phrase, if we have become spiritually unfaithful, if we're committing spiritual adultery because we now have another love as number one in our hearts, He knows that. He says, I love you with a holy love. I want only you to have first place in my heart and me have first place in your heart. I want you to love me with an undivided love. The Bible says much about spiritual adultery. In fact, it says a nation can provoke God to the nth degree, almost incredibly provoke God. But the thing that will finally bring about His wrath is if the people who profess to be God say, I will violate this first commandment and we will have other gods as God of our hearts. In fact, the reason why God says that the Israelites were to decimate and destroy every living Canaanite without exception is for two reasons. Number one, because of their gross apostasy as one of the peoples of the earth that had left the worship of the one true God, they were guilty of violating the first commandment. And then they're violating the commandment that says thou shalt not commit murder because of the great sin of killing their babies, which were true in the religion they had come up with. The first thing that you did if you wanted to be successful in business or farming or anything else was you take your firstborn and you give it to Molech. And the god Molech was a statue of a sitting deity with his arms out. And where his chest would be was a furnace. And what you did was you took your firstborn child and you threw it in the furnace and dedicated it to Molech. And Molech would be pleased and he would bless your endeavors. God says, what an abomination that they would have this false God and then they would so besmirch my name by putting upon this Molech, this God, the idea that he would require sacrifice of your children. This is such an abomination. I want you to exterminate every single Canaanite. That's how much God hates the violation of the first commandment. You shall have no other gods before me. Please turn to Jeremiah chapter 2. Listen to one of the prophets take Israel out to the woodshed. and give it a talking to such as you would not want to hear from God personally. This is one of the classic passages of the Bible on God pleading with His unfaithful people. Jeremiah chapter 2 beginning in verse 4. He's speaking to both the North and the South, Israel and Judah. Jeremiah 2, verse 4, Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the clans of the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord, What wrong did your fathers find in me, that they went far from me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless? Let me preface this by saying, The Bible says whatever you go after, you become like. The God that you serve, you become like. You go after a false God, a worthless God, a God who doesn't really exist, and you become like this false God. They went after worthlessness and became worthless. They did not say, where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness? in a land that none passes through where no man dwells. And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things. But when you came in, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination." Notice in verse 6, the fact that God was no longer residing with his people. The fact that God was letting neighboring countries come and attack Israel and carry people away. And the northern tribes had already been carried into captivity. And only a portion of the original country of Israel was left, the two southern clans of Judah and Benjamin. And they were being attacked by the enemies. And the people didn't have the common sense to say, where is our God? Why has our God left us? This wouldn't have happened. You know, God promised, I will be your God and you shall be my people. I covenanted to take care of you. But he's obviously not doing that. I wonder why. Well, they decided that they could be unfaithful to God. And when you're no longer in love with God and you now have your eyes on your new paramour, then you're not thinking about this one that you have left. And they don't even think to look to this Lord. But it's even worse in verse 8. The priest, well, if there's anybody who should have their head in the game, it should be the religious leaders. The priest did not say, where is the Lord? Those who handle the law, we'd say the seminary professors, the people who do it for a living. Those who handle the law did not know me. The shepherds, the local pastors or rabbis, transgressed against me. The prophets prophesied by veil. They consulted the local pagan deities and went after things that do not profit. Therefore, I still contend with you, declares the Lord, and with your children's children I will contend. for cross to the coast of Cyprus and see. And send to Kedar and examine with care. See if there has been such a thing. Has a nation changed its gods, even though there are no gods? Now, the tragic thing is the Bible says it's not like there's other deities out there competing, God's arm wrestling with them and putting them down and kind of winning his place as number one. There are no other real gods in existence. People make gods in their hearts, but there are no other real gods. Even in the New Testament where Paul says, well, I know some of you are idol worshipers and in some of these local shrines there is a demonic attachment and you may get involved with the occult. It's not like there are true rival deities like in the Greek and Roman pantheon. We had all these petty human deities seemingly competing with one another. The tragic thing is there are no other gods out there except these people are living in La La Land taking for themselves pagan gods and missing the one true and real God. Has a nation changed its gods even though they are no gods? But my people have exchanged their glory, A, for that which does not profit. God is a people's glory. To have God as your God is the most wonderful thing a human being can have. I say this respectfully. If you're not a Christian today, shame on you. There's no glory attached to your life. The one true and living God who made you gives glory when you come into a right relationship with Him. To bear the name of Christian, to have Christ as your Lord, to have Christ as your Savior, to bear the name of God's Son on your life is a great privilege. It's a glory. My people have changed their glory. I no longer count myself as one who loves Jesus Christ supremely. I have other issues in my life. I have other gods that I'm looking at. I have other lovers of my soul. He says, what a tragedy. They have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens. He's calling the heavens to observe and testify. Be appalled, O heavens, at this. Be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord. For my people have committed two evils, so to speak, number one. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters. So over here you have an artesian well. God says, I'm pumping out water, so to speak. And in a desert land, no water, no life. Figuratively, if God's not giving spiritual life, there is no spiritual life. You're spiritually barren. You're spiritually a desert. Your life is a desert. They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves. broken cisterns that can hold no water. What's a cistern? Well, very simply, you'd take a place on the rock and you'd smooth it, and you might fill in the cracks with mud, and it'd just be a place for catching rainwater, or catching, if you could find, a year-round creek in Israel, which is very difficult, because Israel, like Southern California and Arizona, only has periodic rains a couple of times a year, and most of the time they're dry river wadis, they call them. We'd say dry riverbeds in Southern California, that most of the time nothing's in them, they're just dry. And so a cistern is a place like a pool just to catch some water. So he says, you know how stupid this is to leave the one true God? It's to leave an artesian well that's flowing all the time. You never have to pump it. You never have to prime it. An artesian well is always flowing. And then you leave an artesian well that never stops flowing and you go over here to a cistern And it's a broken cistern with cracks. It can't even hold water. The things that you're putting your life into, the things that you're now basing your life on, is crazy because it cannot sustain what you're hoping it will do for you. This can't be God to you. So, what the Lord is saying here is, it leads me to my next point. I love you with a holy jealousy. You cannot have any other God but me if you're really mine. And I will not allow you to. I will not allow you to commit spiritual adultery. If you're mine I will bring you back. The point of the book of Hosea. But it leads into the final point here. The final reason why God wants us to have only him as our God is because we are the most happy when we're most delighted in the Lord. and find our joy and our happiness in Him. To have the one true God as your God means the most happiness for us. Human beings are made to run on God like a car is made to run on gasoline. And for human beings to try to find something else to give their life meaning and purpose, to try to put the things in their life together, nothing else will do it. You can say you have a car and you say, well, I'm going to try to put water in it. Well, duh, that's not going to work. I'm going to try to put vegetable oil in it. Duh, that's not going to work. There's lots of liquids you can put in the gas tank of your automobile. It's made to run on gasoline. Even something kind of close to gasoline like diesel fuel does not work in a gasoline engine. A car, for the most part, is made to run on gasoline. Well, to fulfill my analogy, human beings are made to run on God. And if we try to hook our happiness up with any other thing as the one who'll make our life go, we ourselves are missing the boat and we are missing happiness. And finally, it's here, it's for our own good. If we have the one true God as our God, we are the most happy, the most together. Turn to Isaiah chapter 26, a passage of certain familiarity to Isaiah 26, a passage that I think speaks pretty explicitly. Isaiah 26, verses three and four. You keep him in perfect peace. Whose mind is stayed on you. Focused. Fixed. Unmoving. Because He trusts in you. Trust in the Lord. Notice it's all caps. It's all capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. God's covenant name. Trust in the covenant God forever. For the covenant God, God, Almighty, Sovereign God is... You can build your life on Him as it was meant to. Didn't Jesus talk about building your life on a rock versus building your life on sandy land? And what happens? You can even hear the kids' song. When you build it on the sandy soil and the floods of judgment come, your life is washed away. But when you're built on the rock, nothing can ultimately move you. And He says here what? You keep him in perfect peace whose mind has stayed on you. The eternal reference point. Because he trusts in you. So trust in the Lord forever. He is an everlasting, eternal, never failing, never giving up, never not there, rock. We are the most happy. We can fix our happiness on the Lord. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all this other stuff is given to you as a byproduct. But if you make something else number one in your life and try to fit in God as priority number 11 in a very busy life, you'll miss it all. You'll miss God and you'll miss your own happiness. You'll miss your own contentment. A fish is only a fish when it lives in the water where it's intended to. A fish that says, no, I'm going to live on the land. I'm tired of being a fish. I'm going to live on the land. Well, it's created to live in the water. It will die. A kite is only a kite and is only happy as a kite when it's tethered on the end of a string. If it says, I want to be loose of the string, I want to do my own thing, cut the string please. What happens to a kite? It crashes and is broken. What happens to human beings when they want to cut themselves off from God? They crash and they're broken. A train is only fulfilling its purpose when it stays on the track. A train can do much good. A train can move things and carry things that nothing else can do. And yet if a train leaves the tracks, there's nothing but damage and carnage. A human being is only truly human and only truly happy and only truly fulfills its purpose when it's in a relationship with God. That's why I can tell a person who's not a Christian, look them in the eye. You can do whatever you want to do for the rest of your life and you will never be happy and you will never be fulfilled and you'll never find your place because the God who created you The God who made you for a reason, the God who gave you gifts and abilities and sustained your life and made you in His image is not your God. So you can't know the purpose for which you were created. You can't be truly satisfied and fulfilled because you can't fulfill the reason why God made you. You don't know this God. You don't know the architect. You don't consult the blueprint. No wonder your life is out of whack. No wonder do you have a hard time getting up in the morning. No wonder that you're never motivated, because you don't know the One who created you for a purpose. You don't know your purpose. And so you're just marking time, like someone in prison, x-ing off the days on the calendar. Your life has no meaning and purpose, you say? Well, not surprisingly, if you don't know God, you should expect it to be that way. You're just drifting. You're just making up reasons to fill the time. You're only truly human. You're only truly fulfilled. You're only truly happy. You only truly become that person God created you to be when He is your God and He's number one in your life. What does this first commandment forbid? Well, the first commandment forbids us having anything or anyone as number one in our life except the one true and living God. To have anything or any person in my life as number one is to break the first commandment. God alone is to be central and supreme. Even a good thing, even a good person, even a loved person who becomes God to you, it's wrong. You cannot make another person number one. I counsel couples about to be married. If you make this other person number one in your life, you dishonor God. He will not bless you and you will not have adequate love to give to this person. If you make this person number two in your life, behind Almighty God, You will have the blessing of God, and you will love this person with greater love than if you'd wrongly made them number one and tried to love them in your own strength because you won't be given God's blessing to love that person. You cannot be an idolater and have another person be God to you. Only God can be God to you, and the greatest love in your life must never be higher than number two. Sheldon Van Auken found that out, and he wrote a book, A Severe Mercy. where he loved his wife so much with a self-absorbed, almost, I think, a sinfully suffocating kind of love. But they decided they didn't want children to come between them, so they were fixed so that they couldn't have children. They had enough money that, as an English professor, he had his summers off and his family had enough money. They had a yacht anchored in Chesapeake Bay. He taught at the University of Virginia. And they would spend their summers on the yacht just being self-absorbed with each other. I only live for you. You only live for me. Well, he took a term studying in England, studied under C.S. Lewis. He and his wife began to interact with C.S. Lewis, and C.S. Lewis had a profound effect upon them both. And first she became a Christian, his wife, and then he did. And then after they'd been back in the States and teaching, a sad thing happened. His wife contracted cancer, and it was particularly virulent kind, and she was gone in a matter of a few weeks. And he was just totally shocked. I didn't expect this. I didn't expect that God would take away from me this greatest thing in my life. And he interacted with C.S. Lewis by letter. And Lewis wrote to him one day, God has performed for you his severe mercy. I could tell watching the two of you, she was an idol in your heart. She was your number one love. Even after you came to know the Lord Jesus Christ, he was number two. Our God will brook no rivals. It was a severe mercy. Better that she be taken from you than you come to your senses. Then you actually end up going to hell because you are an idolater and had someone else's number one in your life. Would it require a severe mercy for God to do some surgery in your life? or in my life and take away something from us which we just had to have because it was our God with a small g. Is there some God that reigns as number one in your heart other than the one true and living God? And Von Auken wrote the book, A Severe Mercy, and he said, Lewis was right. God gave me the grace to see he was dead on right. This woman was my idol. She was my God and Jesus Christ was number two. And it pains me that it took something that severe for my God to get my attention. Must God do something that severe to get your attention? Let me see if there are six tests and you can examine your heart as we close. There are six tests to see if a false God reigns in your heart. Test number one. Who or what do you love above all else? Who or what do you love above all else? Who has your affections above all else? When you let your mind roam, where does it go? Your job? Your wife? Your friend? Your God? What gets you excited? Put another way, where do you put your creative energy? What do you do when you have free time to do as you please? You've got this time unexpectedly, you can do anything you want with it. Does your mind go to, I want to spend this time with my God? At the end of the day, who or what is it that must be pleased and happy? You? An idle person? Your job? Your God? Test number two. Who or what do you trust above all else? Or to put it this way, what is the source of your security? How do you know that you're going to be okay tonight? How do you know that things are going to work out? Do you trust in yourself and your abilities? Do you put your trust in the government? Are they your final hope? The government will take care of me. Maybe you collect weapons or you have martial arts skills. I'm not saying it's wrong to have either. Are those your final trust? How about your large bank account? Is your portfolio going to be your trust when all things are said and done? How about your brains and your willpower? You can bend life to do your will. Is that your final trust? Test number three. Who or what do you honor above all else? Who do you look up to and supremely admire? When you think about people or things that you really look up to, you really admire, is God at the top of the heap? Do you think about him as the one you supremely admire and honor? Or do you honor the intelligent and the educated without thinking about Almighty God who is omniscient? Do you honor wealth without thinking of God who is rich in mercy? Do you honor the tough and the successful and ignore the sovereign God? Whose name do you love to see held high and esteemed? What praises do you like to hear sung or talked about? Whose praises? Do you find it easier to speak about your favorite athletic team or your favorite athlete than you do about Jesus Christ? Do you find yourself being more excited about your favorite musician or entertainer than you do about Jesus Christ? Can you name the participants as finals at American Idol? But you couldn't list the attributes of God. Who do you aspire to be like when you finally grow up? Who is your hero? Who is your role model? Whose measurement do you use to measure what happens in life? Who has the final say so on what's great and what's not great? Test number four. Whose smile do you crave and whose frown do you fear above all else? Does it particularly really even bother you when you know you're disobeying God? Does it really bother you? Would it bother you more if you knew that you were displeasing another person? At the end of the day, whose approval or whose attaboy do you desire above all others? Your boss? Your spouse? Your teacher or coach? Your pastor? Yourself? Your friends? Who do you want to hear say, boy, you did a great job today? When push comes to shove, do you want God's approval or men's approval? What if people didn't like you for what you did, but God says, I really am proud of what you did? Would you be happy or would you be bummed out because people's approval or disapproval weighs more with you than God's does? Are you grieved and find it difficult to function when you know that God is upset with you? If you know that you've disobeyed God, does it really grieve your heart? Do you just want to stop everything and get right? Or is that not big a deal to you? If you know another human being is upset with you, does that cause you to be really upset and want to stop and get it right? More so even when God's upset with you. Can you live with men's disapproval if you know that you have Christ? Can you live with men's disapproval if you know that you have Christ? You know, you're never going to make it as a Christian if at the end of the day you want people to like you, and I have to have people's approval even if I don't have God's, then you'll never make it as a Christian because this world is no friend to grace. Test number five, what or whom do you obey, even above God, and you're willing to sin against God and disobey Him in order to obey this thing or this person? Have you ever thought about it? Are you willing to disobey God in order to obey someone else, perhaps even yourself? When was the last time you stopped doing something because God's Word says that He did not want you to do it? I don't do what He says all the time. I pick and choose. Do you regularly obey your desire and do you regularly disobey God if the two are in conflict? Who or what gets your best efforts, your best time? Who gets the dregs of your life? Who gets the dregs of your energy? Who gets the dregs of your creativity? And finally, test number six, who or what do you look to when a crisis comes into your life? If a test came back positive, if you discovered that you had lost your savings, if life was looking like it was crashing all around you, who do you run to in a time of crisis? Who you run to is the one who is supreme in your life. Where do you look to find ultimate comfort and peace and solace? To whom or what do you look to solve your biggest problems? Oh, I need to call this person right away. I don't know what to do. Who do you look to as the fixer of life's problems? Martin Luther said, whatever your heart clings to and relies upon, that is properly your God. Whatever your heart clings to and relies upon, that is properly Thomas Watson, the Puritan, said, to trust in anything before God is to make it a God. Some people, sadly, count on their addictive crutches. They don't know if the crisis can be solved, but what will get them through it is their addictive crutches. If there is a crisis, if they're lonely, if they're depressed, if they're stressed out, So who or what do you run to in a time of great stress and difficulty? Do you run to another human being like yourself? Do you run to alcohol? Do you run to some drug? Some people go to bed and just sleep. If I just sleep, life goes away. Some people go to sex. Some people go to shopping. Some people go to video games. There's all different ways of escapism depending on your particular pathology. Some people foolishly consult the supernatural that's not of God. I will look at tarot cards. I will play with Ouija boards. I will go to seances. I will consult a fortune teller. There must be somebody who can give me help. Even a good thing becomes a bad thing if it becomes the God of your heart. If there's a person or thing that you trust in that's not God, at that point it becomes a God to you and it becomes sin. As you read the life of David, there's an event that's seemingly kind of strange. David numbers his troops. There had been organization of his troops, but there had never been a numbering. I wonder how many thousands of troops Israel can muster in a state of war. After all, we've become the number one player in this region of the world. How many troops do we have? And so he numbered his troops and then God struck. Israel and struck David with his blight and all these thousands of people died because David had a new God in his heart. He wasn't trusting the one true God who had given Israel its victories. He was trusting in the number of his troops. I use that analogy. People say, how many books are in the Law College library, in your library? I go, I don't know. Is that important? If we had 10,000, would we be better than if we had 10? Would that make us more significant? Is the number of books on your shelf? Is having ten million dollars in your bank account more good than having a million dollars? More good than having a hundred thousand? I mean, what is your trust in? There's nothing wrong with having a savings account. There's nothing wrong with having books in your library. But it becomes sin if you put your trust in them, even as David membered his troops. Saul was displaced by Samuel and was displaced as king by God. And he said, I must know what to do. I don't know what to do. So he consults the witch of Endor and goes to one who supposedly has access to the dead and has otherwise unknowable occult knowledge and consults her, which is a capital crime in Israel. But I must have help here. And I will go even to the dark side if I can get some help. The first commandment forbids us from having any other God, but the one true and living God is our God. That's only right because he is God. It's really true. It's because he's a jealous God. And it's for our own good. If you have any other God, including yourself, as God in your life, you're a sinner. So I don't know why we're going through the Ten Commandments. It shows us our duty. And if we're not a Christian, it shows us that we're a sinner. Is God your God? Is anything else number one in your heart? If it is, If there's anything else in your heart that's more important to you than Almighty God, then you're a sinner and you need a Savior. You're a rebel and you refuse to acknowledge the glory of God. You refuse to acknowledge His greatness. You refuse to acknowledge His sovereignty in your life. You will not have the one true and living God as your God. And you're a rebel and that's why you need a Savior. And I'm here to tell you that Jesus Christ is a Savior to sinners. And He will receive any sinner who humbly, penitently comes to Him In surrender, it says, Lord, make me yours. Make me into a Christian. Forgive my sins. I trust that you can make me right before God. Change my wicked heart. Make my heart right. Let's pray.