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Thessalonians, verses 2-10. This is God's word. We give thanks to God always for all of you constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers, loved by God, that He has chosen you because our gospel came to you not only in word but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere so that we need not say anything. For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven whom He raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. Here is the reading of God's word. Father in heaven, as we come to consider today the first commandment of the 10, we pray that you would open our hearts and minds in Jesus' name, amen. Now the first commandment is you shall have no other gods before me. Now that's not popular for the most part in our culture. What's popular is pluralism. What's popular is to say there are many different ways to God, what's popular is to say is it really necessary. But there was an interesting exchange that I saw this week between two people who I don't think are Christians. Well I know one of them isn't, Bill Maher, and the other is Russell Brand. And Bill Maher was sort of denigrating the Bible as he often does. And Russell Brand said this. He said when it says in the Old Testament worship no other gods than me, the implication I offer is that we are a species that worships. And if you do not excess the divine, you will worship the mondiel. I had to look it up. It means the world. You will worship the profane. You will worship your own identity. You will worship your belongings. You will worship the template laid before you by a culture that wants you, not wants you, but gets you distracted and relatively dumb. That's a pretty accurate description of North American culture. So we should pay attention when God 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. Now literally that means before my face. And we looked last week briefly at where God confronts the Philistines' God, Dagon. The Philistines had captured the Ark of God and they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod and they carried the Ark into Ashdod's temple and set it beside Dagon. When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon falling on his face on the ground before the Ark of God. They took Dagon and put him back up but the following morning when they arose, there was Dagon falling on his face, on the ground before the Ark, his head and hands broken off and were lying on the threshold. Only his body remained. So what does it mean to have no other gods before me? I think it means very similarly, very similar to wedding vows. A lot of you are married or have been married. And in the wedding vows, there's a line that says forsaking all others. Forsaking all others. And what does that mean? That means there are no backup plans. That means there are no contingencies. That means there's no second team. When you decide to marry someone, you are simultaneously deciding not to marry anyone else. When you decide to marry someone, you are at the same time committing not to entertain thoughts or make plans to marry or date, et cetera, anyone else. It would not go over very well with your spouse if you're married. If you said, yes, we're married. But you know, I really liked my old girlfriend so her and I are gonna continue to see each other occasionally. I don't think that would fly. Other things seem to compete for the affections of the husband or the wife, even if it's not another person competing for romantic affections, things such as work. Usually it's men who are being accused of being married to their job, but that's changing somewhat. Sometimes it's children that occupy the attention of the husband and wife. Sometimes it's the institution itself. There are people, believe it or not, who get married to marriage so that their affections are for the state of matrimony, not necessarily to the husband or the wife. They wanted to be married. And they found somebody who would slot in. So that they can be married, which is what they really wanted. Now, you might be thinking, why am I using marriage as an illustration of the first commandment? Because that's precisely what God does. Over and over again, God describes himself as the husband of his people, the church. Isaiah 61, for example. Their descendants, verse nine, will be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples and all who see them will acknowledge that they are the people the Lord has blessed. I delight greatly in the Lord. My soul rejoices in my God, for he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with jewels. For as the soil makes the sprout come up and garden cause seeds to grow, so the sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all the nations. In the next chapter, 62.5, as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so your God will rejoice over you. And at the end of the scriptures, Revelation 21, I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. So we can see that the illustration of marriage is very appropriate when it comes to having no other gods before me. So when God says to Israel, after rescuing them from slavery in Egypt, you shall have no other gods, he's not suggesting that he should have first place in a large number of other gods in our lives, but he should be the only God, because he is the only true God. Now all of scriptures is a record of God being faithful and the true husband of his people, but unfortunately it's also a record of them turning away to idols. Jeremiah 2 says, be appalled at this, O heavens, verse 12, and shudder with great horror. My people have committed two sins, they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns, that cannot hold water. See, there's that marriage language again, they have forsaken me. When you get married, you forsake all others. Here, God's people have forsaken him. Later in Jeremiah it says, can a virgin forget her ornaments or a bride her attire, yet my people have forgotten me, days without number. How well you prepare your way to seek love, therefore even the wicked women you have taught your ways. But where are your gods, which you have made for yourself? Let them arise if they can save you in the time of your trouble, for according to the number of your cities are your gods, O Judah. The point of all this is to explain that God desires us for himself, and he doesn't want to share us with any other so-called God. In fact, God is described in the Ten Commandments, and later on in Exodus 34, as a jealous God. 34, 14 says, do not worship any other God, for the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God. You can imagine if you are married and you love somebody, and you find out that they're seeing somebody else, that might make you jealous. God instructs Israel that he's their only God, and not only is he their only God, he's the only God. And because he is the only true God, Christianity must be missionary. Now this is the part that a lot of Christians have a difficult time with. As one minister put it, they might say, they might say, you know, we love the love, we love the humility, we love the call to mercy, we love the call to sacrifice, we love the news that God loves us, and that we don't have to work for our place in heaven. All of that we love, but this mission stuff, can we do without that? Maybe you resonate with that. Can we do without evangelism? Can we do without witnessing? Can we do without mission? The answer is no, we can't. In the New Testament passage we read from Thessalonians, we see the same thing. In verse five, Paul said, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, and the Holy Spirit, and deep conviction. And in verse eight, the Lord's message rang out from you. Not only in Macedonia and Ikea, your faith in God has become known everywhere. Well it doesn't become known everywhere unless somebody is saying something. I've heard this many times, this saying, and maybe you've heard it, maybe you like it. It goes like this, preach the gospel, use words if necessary. If you don't use words, you're not preaching the gospel. Words are necessary. So that statement is a falsehood. When you preach the gospel, the evangelical is good news. The gospel is good news. Good news has to be told. You have to use words. Every other religion in the world is first a philosophy or set of principles. Christianity is first about events, things that have actually happened in the course of history. The teachings of Christianity are teaching about events and how you should live in light of them. Whereas the events in the other religions are meant to highlight and point to the teaching of a particular religion. If you read from the sacred writings of any world religion other than Christianity, you'll find it comes down to this. Try hard, do good, you'll be rewarded accordingly. Buddhism at the end says strive without ceasing. Hinduism is reincarnation over and over again until you get it right. And then if you do finally get it right, you get the bliss of nothingness. In Islam, Allah is merciful. Allah is merciful. But if you dig a little deeper, Allah is merciful to those who try real hard to do the right thing. Now let me ask, is any of that good news? Think of it. Someone comes to you and says, tell me how I can get to heaven. And your answer is try real hard, do your very best, strive without ceasing, then we'll see. That's not good news. And you know, Paul says the gospel is good news. What does that mean? The word gospel means good news of events which have actually happened and by which we have salvation. It comes from the Greek word, which means to report good news of real events. And here are the events that the scriptures describe. There's the creation. That God has spoken into existence everything that exists. He created all of us from nothing in the space of six days. Then the incarnation is that God himself became one of us. Then the crucifixion. That God in the flesh paid for our sins by living a perfect life in our place and dying a horrible death on the cross in our place. And then finally the resurrection where God demonstrates that he is God, that Jesus risen from the dead. And it's not abiding by the teaching that saves us as Paul puts it from the wrath to come. It's believing that those events happened and that they're for us. Verse 10 tells us it is his son from heaven, Jesus the incarnate one who was dead, Jesus the crucified one but was raised, Jesus the resurrected one. So this is turning to God from idols. Automatically results in serving the living and true God. And what are idols? We'll talk more about it next week but they're created things. Roman one tells us they exchanged the truth of God for a lie they worshiped and serve the creature rather than the creator who is praised forever. Amen. Idols are things in our lives which we have created to which we give honor to which we even worship. Now one commentator said this. For some of us it's romance. You've heard the song, maybe you've heard the song, it's an old song by Dean Martin. I won't sing it. You're nobody till somebody loves you. Have you heard that song? You're nobody till somebody loves you. Think of that. If you believe that, you believe that unless someone falls in love with you, you are not valid as a human being. You are a nobody. That's an idol. But then the commentator said, what if the song was changed? You're nobody till somebody promotes you. Or you're nobody till somebody quotes you. Or you're nobody till somebody fill in the blank. There's so many idols, the trouble with all of them is they do not last, they cannot rescue, you are in trouble. Who you gonna call on? Is it money? It can be taken from you. If it's a person, a parent, a spouse, a child, they can die. What are you going to do when your God lies cold in a casket? Who's going to save you then? Now for some of you, it's yourself. And that's what's at the bottom of so many idols. You worship a God of your own making. I've talked to so many people who like to pick and choose what's in the Bible. They say, I like this part, but I don't like that part. I like, as we mentioned before, I like the love, I like the mercy, I like the humility. I don't like the judgment. I don't like the wrath. But you see at the bottom of that is you're creating God in your own image. Do you see now why God says to Israel, you shall have no other gods before me? Because no other God can save you, they cannot help you, they will fail you. As we said, Jeremiah says, where then are the gods that you made for yourself? Let them come if they can save you when you're in trouble. For you have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah. Now, so far I've been, I think, fairly generic. But Martin Luther says the Christian life is one of continual repentance. And so when we break any of the commandments, he says, we're breaking the first commandment. And we did this in our men's Bible study last Thursday. We looked at how when you break any of the commandments, you were first breaking the first one. So let me briefly go through them. We're going to start with the last one. You should be able to see the first one. Let me start with the last one. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, desire your neighbor's house, his field, his male servant, his female servant, his ox or his donkey or anything that your neighbor is. Now, if you do covet what belongs to your neighbors, what you are saying is that God has failed somehow. God has not provided for you in the way that he should have. You would have done a better job of being God than God. You should not bear false witness against your neighbor. When you lie, in that moment, you're saying whatever it is you're lying about, if you're lying for approval of others, if you're lying to protect your reputation, if you're lying to, for your own comfort. Whatever reason you're lying, at that moment you're saying that thing, whatever it is, is more important than God. So you're breaking the first commandment. You shall not commit adultery. That one's pretty obvious. Physical adultery is bad. But spiritual adultery happens first and honestly is worse. You shall not murder, take the life of another person. When you do that, you're putting yourself in the place of God. You're violating the first commandment. When you don't honor your father and mother as God commanded you, you are putting yourself in place of God. Then it comes to the Sabbath. And we'll get to that in a couple of weeks in more detail. But when you dishonor the Sabbath, you're saying to God, I have more important things to do on Sunday than honor you, than worship you, than read your scriptures, than the things that you've told me that I should do. I don't know how it happened or when it happened, but somehow going to soccer games on Sunday morning in place of worship became a thing. It's not biblical. It's a violation of God's command to honor the Sabbath. What you're saying is, whether it's your son or your daughter or yourself, you're saying, my recreation time is more important than worshiping God. Taking the name of the Lord your God in vain, for God will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. You shall not make for yourself a carved image. All of these. You're first violating the first commandment. In a constant process of having our idols revealed to us, so we can forsake them, God's people continually turn away from him and serve false gods. For some of you, and your idol worship, for some of you, your idol might be worship. Some of you, you prefer the most contemporary free form anything-go style of worship. Others of you want a high church liturgical form of worship. But if you're not careful, the style of worship becomes more important to you than God. And we all need to turn from our idols to serve the living God. The good news is that we are here not without help, even in our turning. Remember, God says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of slavery. Remember, Paul writes, beloved of God, our gospel comes in power and the Holy Spirit. Even though you turn away a thousand times, he will come to your aid and cause your cold idolatrous heart to turn yet again. Why such grace? Because he loves you. Why such mercy for his glory? Who gets the glory if the good news is try hard as you can and you'll be rewarded? I do. You do. And that's idolatry. But who gets the glory if he rescues your poor helpless soul from the wrath of God to come? God does. And the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you. We are an echo of the love of God displayed in his Son who saves us. Let's pray. Father, thank you. As we prepare our hearts to come to the Lord's Supper, we ask that you would preach to us again the gospel and the giving and receiving of the sacrament. Pray in Jesus' name. Amen.