No Other Gods Before Me

It was a routine flight. It originated in San Francisco, and stopped for fuel in Anchorage. They were cruising at 35,000 feet down the home stretch across the Northern Pacific. Most of the 269 passengers in the Boeing 747 were sound asleep. In a couple of hours they would be landing in Seoul, South Korea.

Up on the darkened flight deck of the giant airliner, things were quiet. The crew looked forward to their arrival in Seoul after a long and routine trip. They chatted quietly among themselves as the plane flew on autopilot.

Little did any of them realize that at that very moment, just a few hundred feet from where they sat, there was another pilot who was watching them. His name was Gennadiy Osipovich, and he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Forces. At that very moment he was sitting in the cockpit of his Sukhoi SU-15 interceptor with his thumb on the trigger of his joystick. In his headphones, he could hear an electronic tone telling him that his missile radar had locked onto the 747 directly ahead of his jet. In a few more seconds, his ground controller on Sakhalin Island would order him to fire. When he did, the crew and passengers of Korean Airlines flight 007 plunged to their deaths in the icy waters of the Pacific.

KAL Flight 007 was deep in Soviet airspace when it was shot down ten years ago, on Sept. 1, 1983. The reason it had wandered so far off course remains a mystery. It may have been that the pilot entered the wrong co-ordinates into the flight computer, causing the airplane to fly the wrong heading. The crew and the passengers were blissfully unaware that they had blundered deep into Soviet airspace. They paid for it with their lives.

If you decide to ignore God’s absolutes as expressed in the Ten Commandments you will be spiritually in the same situation as KAL flight 007. You will be totally off course. According to Isa. 53:6, you will have gone astray, you will have turned to your own way. There will be a fatal flaw in your navigational calculations. You will be flying the wrong heading, and your destination will be disaster.

God gave us the Ten Commandments to serve as a flight plan for right living. However, He did not give us the Ten Commandments to be our ticket to heaven. Our ticket was bought and paid for by Jesus Christ. Having received Jesus Christ by faith, we follow the Ten Commandments in order to fly a straight heading. The Commandments tell us how God wants us to live. They serve as a navigational beacon, to keep us on course.

Turn in your BIble to Matthew 22. One day, a Pharisee asked Jesus a question. The Pharisees were experts in the Law of Moses. This man asked Jesus “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Matthew 22:37 Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Jesus meant that the Ten Commandments can be divided into two sections: Commandments 1-4 deal with your vertical relationship with God. Commandments 5-10 deal with your horizontal relationships with other people.

You cannot hope to get your horizontal relationships with other people right unless you’ve first gotten your vertical relationship with God right. That’s why the Ten Commandments begin here. They begin with the most important relationship of all - your relationship with God. The First Commandment, which is found in Exodus 20:2-3 says…

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.

First, let’s look at what this commandment says, and then we’ll look at what it means to us today in 1993. There are four things I want you to notice about what it says…

1. God begins by identifying himself. He tells the nation Israel that he is the Lord their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt. Why is that significant? Because the God of the Ten Commandments is a God who cares enough about people to want to be involved in their lives.

The Israelites were in a terrible state. They were slaves, held captive in the land of Egypt. They were under the cruel whip of Pharaoh. They were suffering and dying like dogs. And God saw them, God cared about them, and God rescued them - He delivered them.

This is where the Ten Commandments begin. They begin with a God who loves people. I want you to remember that, because many people today think of the God of the Ten Commandments as a stern, angry God who wants to take all the fun out of life. But that is not true. The God of the Ten Commandments is a God of love. He is a God who looked down on people who were suffering and dying and delivered them. He rescued them. And these commandments are an expression of that love.

God hasn’t changed. He still loves us. In fact, he loves us so much that he sent his son Jesus to die for us. So if He loves us that much, it’s worth listening to what He has to say.

2. He says “You shall have no other gods before me.” The you and the me make this commandment very personal. God is a personal God. He isn’t some abstract force or some impersonal object. He is a person, and he desires to enter into a personal relationship with you.

The you in this commandment means you as an individual. God didn’t address the Ten Commandments to Israel as a nation, or to us as a church; he addressed them to each and every individual. So if you’re going to obey them, it’s not going to depend on what anybody else does; it’s going to come down to what you as an individual do about it. God is talking to each one of us here.

3. God says “You shall have no other gods before me.”

God is telling us something important here. He’s telling us that all of us are going to have a god of some description in our life. The only question is: Which god?

God does not assume that you can be an atheist. In fact, the only time that the Bible talks about an atheist is in Psalm 14:1, where it calls him a fool. “The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”

People who call themselves atheists have simply made themselves their god. They worship themselves, and their own intellect, their own knowledge. God says “Only a fool would do that.”

So the question about us is not “Will we worship?” The only question is “Who or what will we worship?” That’s a live question today, in 1993.

Because people today are still looking for a god to worship. They want to put somebody or something at the center of their lives that will give them meaning and satisfaction and fulfillment.

There are a lot of “gods” out there that promise to do that. There is the god of money. The god of power. The god of pleasure. The god of fame. The god of knowledge. The god of sex. The god of celebrity. The god of success. The god of music. The god of sports. The god of romance. The god of politics. The god of education.

Most Americans will worship at the temple of one or more of those gods. They will put one of those gods at the center of their life hoping to find meaning. But those gods don’t deliver. They leave you empty inside. Because they are false gods. There’s only one true God. That’s why He says “You shall have no other gods before me.” Because He knows that only He can satisfy your deepest inner longings.

4. He says “You shall have no other gods before me.”

This commandment says that God doesn’t want to be the chairman of the board of your life. He wants to be the one and only board member. He doesn’t want to own 51% of your stock; he wants it all, 100%. He wants a monopoly on you.

The word “before” is an interesting little word. If you’re a basketball fan, you may have heard of Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan plays basketball like nobody else on this planet. When a game is on the line, and the pressure is hot and heavy, he’ll make an unbelievable move past all the defenders and slam dunk the ball. The other team knows what he’s going to do, they see him coming, but there’s nothing they can do to stop him.

On the streets, they call that “doing it in your face”. That little Hebrew word “before” means exactly that; it means “in your face”. It’s a word that drips with challenge and defiance. It’s a word that says “I’m going to do it and you can’t stop me and I don’t care how you feel about it.”

God says that when we allow other gods into our lives, what we’re saying to him is “In your face, God.” Step aside. I don’t want you to be my one and only. I’m going to do my thing.

When Jesus said “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” he meant that you’ve got to love God with all your being or you can’t really love Him at all.

Do you really love Him that way? Let’s try to find out. Let’s do a little self-evaluation exercise. I’m going to ask you seven questions, and I want you to score yourself 1 to 10 on each of them. 1 is worst, 10 is best. Then at the end, we’ll total them up and see how you did. These seven questions will help you to know how you’re doing in loving God.

1. When you love somebody, you want to be with them as much as possible.

When Carolyn and I were dating, I was attending college in Toronto, and she lived in Montreal, 350 miles away. Do you know what I did? I arranged my schedule so that I had every Friday afternoon off, and I hitch-hiked to Montreal every weekend. Just to be with her.

Do you desire to spend time with God that much? Do you desire to be alone with him?

Psalm 84:1 How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

Psalm 63:1 O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Do you want to be with God that much? Mark yourself 1 to 10.

2. When you love someone, you want to build your relationship with them. You want to get to know them better. You want to find out all about them. You have this insatiable craving to know everything about your beloved. Do you love God that way? Do you hunger to know Him?

How do you get to know God? Through prayer and reading the Word; studying it, meditating on it. Are those things priorities in your life? What do you reach for when you get up in the morning - your Bible, or the newspaper? Do you spend more time in prayer, or in front of the TV?

Paul said “I want to know him…” Moses said “Show me your glory…”

Do you love God so much that you want to get to know him better? Mark yourself 1 to 10.

3. When you love somebody, you want to please them.

Look at what lovers do. They want to do what pleases each other. That’s why a woman wants to find out what her man likes - she wants to know what’s his favorite dress, what’s his favorite perfume, what’s his favorite food. Husbands, we try to remember our wife’s birthday (May 17); our anniversary (Sept.11); Valentines Day. We also need to remember which day is garbage day so we can put out the trash.

We do these things in order to please each other. And it’s not a chore when you love somebody. It’s fun, actually. Do you love God that way? Do you love him enough to want to please him in all that you do?

1 John 5:3 This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome..

Do you love God enough to want to please Him in the way you live? Mark yourself 1 to 10.

4. When you love someone, you’re loyal to them. You’re willing to stand up and defend them, to sacrifice for them, to give up your life for them if need be. You’re willing to put yourself on the line for the one you love.

Do you love God that much? Enough to stand up for Him and defend Him when you hear others slandering Him and dragging His name through the dirt? Or do you slink off in a corner and say nothing because what you really love is your own comfort?

Romans 1:16 I am not ashamed of the gospel

2 Timothy 1:8 Do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord…

Do you love God enough to stand up and be counted for Him? To be unashamed of knowing Him? Mark yourself 1 to 10.

5. When you love somebody, you’re anxious to tell others, aren’t you?

Have you ever talked to somebody who’s in love? Sooner or later, the conversation always comes back to their beloved. They want to tell you all about that special guy, or that special girl they love. Their mind and their heart is full of that person, and overflowing. Do you love God that much?

Psalm 34:1 I will extol the Lord at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.

Psalm 71:8 My mouth is filled with your praise, declaring your splendor all day long.

Do you love God enough to want to tell others about Him? Mark yourself 1 to 10.

6. When you love someone, you’re willing to trust them 100%

You’re willing to place your life in their hands. When we arrived here in Allentown, one of the first things we had to take care of was to open a bank account. We opened a joint checking and a joint savings account. Both our names are on the account.

That means that if Carolyn wanted to, she could take all our money out of the bank and spend it. She has total access. If she wanted to, she could clean us out. But I know she won’t because I love her and I trust her.

Do you love God that much? Enough to put your life and your most valuable possessions in his hands? Enough to follow Him, even though you might not be able to see where he is leading you? Mark yourself 1 to 10.

7. When you love someone, they become the central focus of your life. You don’t put people you love into a cubbyhole; you don’t crowd them into a small section of your life. You build your life around the people you love.

I have a dear friend who had a terrible tragedy happen to him several years ago. He lived in Maine. One summer, his wife and two young daughters went to visit relatives in Toronto. While they were there, the house they were staying in burned down. They were all killed. My friend lost his whole family.

Do you think his life was different after that? You bet it was. His whole life changed completely. The way he spent his time, the way he spent his money - everything changed because he had lost the people he loved.

Let me ask you to imagine something. Suppose, for a moment, that Jesus were suddenly taken away from you. In an instant, he was gone from your life. What would change? Would anything change? Would his absence make a difference in the way that you spend your time and your money? Would it disrupt your daily routine?

Psalm 73:25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

Do you love God so much that He occupies the center of your life? Mark yourself 1 to 10.

Now, total your marks up for the seven questions. How did you do? Anybody get 70? How about 60? 50? 45? Guess what? You all failed. I failed, too. I barely got into double digits. But don’t be depressed - I have some exciting news for you. Even though we all flunked the test, Jesus scored a 70 for you and me!

He wrote the test for us. And he aced it! Remember, it’s his righteousness that brings us into right relationship with God. It’s not our performance. If it were, then we’d all have had to score a perfect 70 on this test.

But I’m sure you want to do better. I’m sure you’re not satisfied with how you did. God knows your heart. He knows just how feeble your love for Him is. But he isn’t mad at you; he loves you. And he wants to help you do better.

So just ask Him to help you love Him better. Make that your heart’s prayer this morning: “Lord Jesus, O for grace to love you more.” And then make it your business to get to know Him better by spending more time in the Word and in prayer. Re-order your priorities so that you can spend more time with Him. They say that familiarity breeds contempt, but that’s certainly not true in this case. The more of Jesus you get to know, the more in love with Him you’ll grow.

The first and greatest commandment is this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.” It all begins here. Let’s tell God that we want to do that. If we do nothing else in this life, we want to love Him. Let’s pray.