Hello and welcome to this week's service at Westminster Reformed Presbyterian Church. We are located out of Prairie View, Illinois, a northwest suburb of Chicago. We are so glad that you decided to join us today. This is our next sermon in the series on the Ten Commandments by Pastor Brett Malin. Our scripture reading will be Deuteronomy 6, 1-5 and 1 Corinthians 8, 1-6. Our sermon text will be Exodus 20, 1 through 3. Thank you. The Bible tells us that God is a God of order. He is a God of order, not a God of disorder. Now, in the context in which it tells us that, in the book of 1 Corinthians, it is certainly talking about worship. order in a worship service. You cannot have chaos. You cannot have anarchy in worship. But really, that does apply to all things, that God is a God of order. And oftentimes, when we come to His Word, we miss how very ordered the Word of God is. What I'm trying to say is, or where I'm going with this, is that take, for example, just the number 10. God seems to love the number 10. We might miss, as we read Genesis chapter one, that 10 times in Genesis chapter one, it tells us God said, and his creative power comes after that. Very early on in the book of Genesis, we see what is another 10. We see that there are 10 generations from Adam to Noah. Certainly not a coincidence. From Adam, the one who would bring death, the one who would bring guilt and pollution and punishment, and then Noah, the one who would bring rest, ultimately. Very early on in the Bible as well, we see the doctrine or the teaching of the tithe, 10%, which is to be given for the ministry Is it not interesting that as we see Abraham, or Abram, bartering with God about Sodom, about Gomorrah, he says, if I can find fifty righteous men, if I can find forty righteous men, down all the way till ten, and that is the one on which God agrees, if you can find ten righteous men, I will not destroy the city. With that in mind, just in the first book, 10 times God says, God said, 10 generations, the tithe, all of these things that ought to really cause our ears to perk up when we see that God rains down 10 plagues upon the Egyptians. It's no coincidence. And it is no coincidence, then, that God who rains down ten plagues upon the Egyptians also gives to the Hebrews ten commandments. Very interesting indeed. We come this day to the first of those commandments. The first of those commandments, thou shalt have no other god before me. So what I want to press home to you this day is this, that it is a great sin to have any other God besides the one true God. And therefore, the covenant people must have no other God but the one who reveals himself in the Bible. There's not something ironic about the first commandment, though. seems to me very ironic that it even needs to be said. That it even needs to be said is ironic. We ought to say that the first commandment ought to be something much too plain to say. What do I mean by that? What I mean is this. There are some things that just don't need to be pointed out. They are so obvious. Could you imagine the hearts of the Egyptians, how they ought to have been? What have they witnessed? They have had some hardship in Egypt for hundreds of years in bondage, but then they see God's mighty power displayed. They see God's mighty power displayed in those 10 flags. And then they see the sea parted, so it's as if there are walls of water, and they are able to walk across that. And then they will see, a little after that, manna, that is bread, that falls from heaven. You know, it's astonishing. Is that there would be any temptation for any other God? You might think, well, if I were there, I wouldn't want any other God, though. I would say, what a grand display of the power and majesty of God against the Egyptian gods. And you might say, He provided us food. in the wilderness, and we saw the sea parted. Therefore, what other God could we ever want to worship and follow? This is the God that we want to follow, the one who rescues us, the one who hears our cries, the one who displays his majesty. That's the God we ought to follow. And so, in a sense, there ought to be nine commandments. This is one that ought to be much too plain to say, or it is much too plain to say. But, of course, future generations will need to hear it so it's understandable that it does, in a sense, need to be said. But what do we really find when we look into our own hearts? We see the mighty display of God. We see it in creation. We see it in redemption. We see it in the miracle, which is the Bible, which is God's word. And we begin to follow after other gods. Indeed, the problem is not simply information. The problem is the hearts of the Hebrews, that they are not right We begin to see, lest we have the righteousness and the self-righteousness of the Pharisees, we begin to see that we are more like them than we had thought. We are more like the Israelites than we realize. And we do not self-righteously say, I would have gotten it right. We hope that we would have. We hope that we would be like Joshua, having faith. We hope that we would be like Moses, having faith, as the book of Hebrews in chapter 11 tells us, to have faith like them. For us, there is one God, and he reveals himself as one. And in the New Testament, the expansion of God's revelation He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But put yourselves into the minds of those Hebrews. Put yourself into the minds that they must have had. They were very aware of the gods of Egypt. And I mean that very intentionally. The gods of Egypt. Because in Egypt, there were many gods. In Egypt, there were gods of almost every single thing and every single object in the sky above and in the earth and underneath the earth and the sea, everything. There were gods everywhere. And what does God, the true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, what does he seek to do? He seeks to put these down, that He might raise Himself up. You must understand that just as there are ten commandments and ten plagues, each of those ten plagues are a rebuke We could say a rebuke and, really, an excommunication of each and every one of the Egyptian gods, at least the ones that are prevalent. Let me just tell you the sorts of gods that are being aimed at by the true god in the book of Exodus. Just to name, I mean, I have the list before me. There are 10 of them. I'm not going to list all of them for you, just because I don't want to seek to bring too much attention to them. But you should know that for each and every plague, there is a corresponding God who is made to be humbled and made to be nothing. So there is Hapi, the Egyptian god of the Nile. Why is it important that you see that there was an Egyptian god of the Nile? Because Jehovah, the true God, guess what he did? He turned the Nile into blood. And by so doing, he shows that he is more powerful than Hapi. Or there is Isis, an Egyptian female goddess of medicine and peace. And she is shown to be nothing by the fact that the Egyptians broke out with boils on their skin, and Isis was not able to help them. One god humbling ten of the Egyptian gods. And, of course, there is Ra. The sun god, and how is he rebuked, and how is he humbled? He is humbled because of the fact that God brings days of darkness, three days of complete darkness upon Egypt, of such power that it was a painful darkness to the Egyptians, and of course there was light in the camp of the Hebrews. That's just three of the main examples. Of course, there are many other gods as well, but the one that was most humbled was Pharaoh himself. You see, because Pharaoh was a god, just like all of these others, the difference was that the Pharaoh worshipped as God, seen as an incarnation of a god. was humbled by the true God himself, for he was not able to keep his firstborn son alive. As God said in Exodus chapter 4, it says, Israel is my firstborn son. And if you do not let my firstborn son go, then I will kill your firstborn son. This is God not being a meanie, This is God showing His power and His glory, that He is one God who is over all of the other gods. Indeed, all of the other gods are flimsy and they are fake. All of the other gods do not exist, ultimately. So you must understand that when Moses gives these 10 commandments, or when God gives these 10 commandments through Moses, the first one is, thou shalt have no other gods before me. In other words, you must leave those Egyptian gods behind you. But of course, they are going to enter into the land, into Canaan. You must understand that they were to exterminate all of the people there. Why? Because they were going to be influenced by their gods. Because it was very, very likely, given the heart nature of the Hebrews, that they could go out of the frying pan into the fire. In other words, they could leave gods behind them and then embrace a whole number of other gods, a pantheon of other gods, because the Canaanites, they had all these gods there. And if the hearts of the Hebrews were not right and they were following after the Egyptian gods, then they will not be right if they exchange one set of gods for another set of gods. And so, therefore, they must lay down all other gods and worship the one who displays his power and his glory and his mercy and his grace to a particular people. And we live in a day and age of many gods and many religions as well. And just as we would reject, they were to reject the ones behind them and before them, so must we reject the gods which are before us. There are many people who come evangelizing and declaring that they have the truth and we must not fall into their agendas. We would reject, then, the Muslim conception of God that says that Allah, who is their God, cannot have a son. You see, these two things cannot be. We cannot have Christianity in which we worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and at the same time have Allah, who is a God who cannot have a son. We must reject the idea of the Church of Latter-day Saints What do we find there? We have a God who is proclaimed to us, who's declared to them that basically this God is a physical being who exists on another planet called Kolob, and he sends spirits down to this earth and to this world. As Jesus rightly said, God is spirits. and those who worship Him will worship Him in spirit and in truth. May we acknowledge that the God the Father is spirit and therefore let us worship Him in spirit and in truth to worship a God who is on another planet and is a physical being. with physical lives is an affront to the one true God. We must reject even the Watchtower organization as they're called Jehovah's Witnesses. Why? Because it denies the eternity of the Son of God. Biblically speaking, we acknowledge that God the Father is eternally the Father. Why? Because the Son is eternally the Son. The truth is that God is one being in three eternal, distinct persons. So therefore, thou shalt have no other gods before me. And to drive this point home, in the book of Deuteronomy, We have a very important verse. That verse is Deuteronomy 6, 4. Let me just say that in many a Jewish mind, going back for centuries, even maybe for millennia, this is the most important verse in the whole of the Old Testament. And what does it say? Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. This verse is famously called the Shema, the Shema, because that's the first word. Hear, it is a word, it's a command that says, hear, pay attention, listen to this. It is customary for Hebrews for centuries, even millennia, to pray this prayer, to recite this verse from memory in Hebrew, at least in the morning and in the evening, at least twice a day. That's why I say it's probably the most important in the Jewish mind. And look what it says in the next verse, Deuteronomy 6, 5. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. Now, let me ask you something. And ask your own heart, as I ask you. Is it possible to confess with your mouth the true God and the truth of God, and at the same time, to have a heart that has no affection for him. Is it possible to have simply a vocal religion without anything that is internal within the heart? It certainly is. And woe unto anyone who has a verbal profession what is not impacted in the heart. Because you see the importance of this verse. It's not accidental that it is so popular. Hear, O Israel, listen to this. Shema Yisrael. And then what immediately follows, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart. In other words, that profession must be followed by a heart adoration of love for the God who rescues sinners. And it is very interesting. I hope you'll find this interesting as well. If you were to look at a Hebrew Old Testament, whether one that has been written out by rabbis or one that is a printed edition, you will see that the last letter of the first word, Shema, and the last letter of the last word in this verse, Echad, The last letters of the first and last words are extra big. They're extra big. Like, there's a type font. There's a font. Let's just say it's about 10 point font. And these are about like 12 or 13 point font. And I have to confess that I thought that this was some sort of typo by the manufacturers, by the printers. For a number of years I thought that, and just a number of years ago I discovered that that was not the case, that that was intentional. That there is a tradition that goes all the way back centuries, maybe even millennia, and that is to make these two letters, the last letter, the first word, the last letter of the last word, extra large. so that when someone comes to this in Hebrew and says, here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, that he will take note of that, these extra large letters. And the reason is this, because if you bring these two letters together, you form a different Hebrew word, and it is witness. And what it is declaring is that anyone who would profess these verses and profess the true God must do so with his mouth. and he witnesses against himself. In other words, almost like a court of law, he testifies against himself if he has mouth religion, but not heart religion. I'm not sure if this goes back to Moses or not, but whatever it is, whenever it has its genesis, You must see, it's very remarkable, the seriousness, the seriousness of making an outward profession of belief and trust in the true God, and then have hearts that are so far away. As God says in the book of Isaiah, this people honors me with their mouths, but their hearts are far away. And that was the case. in Moses's time, and it would be the case even much later. My hope and my prayer for all of you, and also beyond this room, is that you would profess faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and that you would love him and adore him, not just with your mouth, but with your heart, the seat of your emotions. And you would say that there is no other God like that. There is no other god who is able to do such amazing things, to speak like that, and to create images like us. For you are an image-bearer. See, all of the other gods, the best that can happen is that a person creates an image, an icon, or a statue of that god, but the true god makes you in his own image. Indeed, we see that those would witness against themselves by saying, Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and would have their hearts far away from it. There is something deeply wrong with their hearts. They need heart surgery. They need to have hearts of stone taken out and hearts of flesh placed in. They need to have God who will break up the rock hard soil of their hearts for him to turn over their hearts. and for him to take the rocky soil out, and for him to leave soil which is without such stones, that such hearts might have the word implanted in them, and that the implanted word would sprout and that it would grow and that it would give fruit and then it would give a harvest of righteousness. That is God's desire for Old Testament believers. And that is God's desire for you as a New Testament believer. Well, you might think. that we as New Testament believers have been gypped, because we don't have a Shema like that. We don't have something that's repeated twice a day. Well, I think we do. You must see what Saul, the Hebrew of Hebrews, as he called himself, when he speaks of his previous life, which he calls dumb, Does that mean that everything was bad about that? Well, the self-righteousness was bad, but he brings into the Christian faith many things that are good, a prayer life, a life of preaching and teaching and trusting in the true God. He was lost, but of course, he brings in some Jewish practices which are, by the New Testament, reaffirmed. And in a sense, the Apostle Paul gives the New Testament Christian a New Testament Shema, a New Testament word, and we find it in 1 Corinthians 8, 5 and 6, and I start in the middle of 8, and it says this, and as there be gods many and lords many, but to us there is but one. Do you hear just almost the echo of the Shema? But to us there is but one God, the Father. of whom are all things, and we in him." But here we have the expansion. It's not an expansion of God, because God has always been Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but it is an expansion of the teaching. It is an expansion of the revelation. Understand that the fullness of the New Testament is not revealed in Genesis chapter 3. Over the course of centuries, God is revealing a little bit, a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more, and God's revelation reaches its crescendo in the New Testament, when God, who had spoken by the prophets in many times and many ways, now speaks to us in his own Son. We have this expansion of our understanding of the God who has always been this way. One God, the Father. But then he says, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things and we by him. He is showing us that which is shadowed. in the Old Testament. He is showing us, just as there are hints of God the Father and God the Son in the Old Covenant, now it is revealed with great clarity to us, and he echoes that Shema as a once faithful Jew, now a faithful Christian. But to us there is but one God, the Father of whom are all things, and we in Him. And one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him. And then there is this curious, as there be God's many and Lord's many. Now the Apostle Paul is not saying that there are literal gods running about. even as the Greeks thought. The gods of the Greek and the Roman understanding were all these almost like superhuman people. He's saying they're everywhere, and they're worshipped everywhere. But of course they're not real, they're fake. And if they are real at all, they're demonic. They're followers of Satan, of Lucifer. They're all around us, though. God's many and Lord's many. But for us, there is one, the Father and the Son. One God. in three persons, two of them being revealed there, of course, the Holy Spirit, often the silent member or the less-emphasized member or less-emphasized person of the Trinity, but still no less there. The Holy Spirit always seeking to bring glory to the Father and to the Son, to bring attention to the Father and to the Son. And we can say In our culture, there are gods many and there are lords many. Where are they? Are they the worshipping of statues? Is the United States like India, which has gods many and lords many, where it has national gods and city gods and family gods and personal gods, all these pictures and statues that people worship? No, it's not like that. Then can we say that in the United States there are gods many and there are lords many? Yes, of course. We do not worship statues per se, but there are so many things in our culture that we put before the one true God, we put before the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Oftentimes we follow after youth Our culture adores youth. Our culture wants to continue in youth forever. Our nation, oftentimes so obsessed with wealth, so obsessed with health, so obsessed with other people's opinions of us. You see what that is when we are so consumed by other people's opinions of us, that we act and we speak and we think so that we might conform to what others think. See what we have? We may not be worshiping a literal God, but we have made other people our gods. And we will sacrifice our time and our talents and our treasure oftentimes so that we might please our gods and our heads are hung low when our gods, that is to say other people's opinions, are not great about us. Think about that. Realize how much at the mercy of other people we are. which our very mood depends upon the praise that we give to other people, and they're returning the praise to us. That's not the plight of the Christian. The plight of the Christian is to say, I love the Lord Jesus. That is to say, I love the Lord Jesus more than my own family. I love the Lord Jesus more than my own country. I would give all for him. I love the Lord Jesus more than my own very life. And what do we think when people say, you Christians, what are you doing? You're not seizing everything that is available for us in this life. It's given to us and you must take it. Oh, you're following after Jesus. Jesus warned his disciples that they would say all sorts of horrible things against the disciples and against us. And the Lord Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount tells us, that you are blessed when all sorts of things are said about you for Jesus sake. Why? Because a servant is not above the master. If they said these sorts of things, if they said these kinds of lies against the Lord of glory. And how would you expect them not to say such things about you? one who seeks to follow him. It has been said by some who pretend to stand outside of religion and say, you know what? Christians are over here and they're proclaiming how great their God is, and other religions are over here proclaiming how great their God is. And it's actually very childish, they'll say. You see, it's kind of like the schoolyard discussions about, my dad could beat your dad up, or my best friend could beat up your best friend. or our baseball team is better than your baseball team, and we'll show you right now. And so many would stand back from this and say, you know, that's really all this is. This is just a grown-up form of my dad can beat up your dad. And here's the problem. One who would think that One who would say that reveals something very troublesome in his or her heart. It is a troubled heart, indeed it is a sick heart, that would say something like that, because these things cannot be reduced to such smallness. Listen to the words of Isaiah 43, 10, and 11. It says, He are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that ye may know and believe me and understand that I am he. And then this is key. There was no God formed, neither shall there be after me." And then this is the real key. I, even I, am the Lord, and beside me there is no Savior. If you would just say, this is my against your dead, you've totally missed it. Why would Christians engage in such things? Because this is not simply my guy is better than your guy and my team is greater than your team. What we do as believers and as Christians is we understand that just as the Hebrews were in bondage, they were in slavery to a literal anti-Christ pharaoh. So were you. in bondage to sin and to Satan and to the world. It's not about simply, our God is better than yours. It's not simply, our God exists and yours does not. But it is this, our God is the God who rescues us from that bondage. That's why the preface begins as it does, as it begins saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. We could paraphrase that and say, I am the God who rescues you, your blindness, and your deadness and your deafness and your sinfulness, a rebellion against God. And here God comes and he rescues a people. Why? Is it because they were greater than the Egyptians? It's not that. Were they more numerous? No. Were they more righteous? No. Indeed, God in his wonderful divine counsel would have been right. to save the Egyptians and damn the Israelites. But for whatever his reason, for whatever his purpose, it was for his glory that he would rescue peculiar people for himself. It's not just my God against yours, it is that in God, who is one hero Israel in God, the Father, God, the Son and God, the Holy Ghost. What we have is a God who is a rescuer. Beside me, there is no savior. And how does he rescue us? All of the Old Testament points forward to the Lord Jesus. What the Hebrews endured under Egypt is just a picture of us being rescued from the bondage of sin, and we do not look for an earthly Moses. We look to a heavenly Moses. We look to the Lord Jesus, who comes into our bondage. and provides light in the darkness, and curses everything that is behind us and everything before us, and he paves a way for us, and he does so by being nailed to a cross. and being pierced for your transgressions. He does so that you might know the rescuing power, not of your body simply from a nation, but of your body, soul, and spirit from the realm of darkness, so that it might be translated, transported into the realm of light. I will seek to close with Joshua 24. Very interesting words. I want you to hear this, maybe for the first time. Oftentimes we see these words that say, choose this day whom you will serve. Choose this day whom you will serve. A lot of people think, well, okay, we've got idolatry, or we'll choose the true God. That's often the way it's understood. If you've understood it that way, let me just encourage you to read it again for the first time, or to hear it again for the first time, as a commercial from the 80s once said. Hear it again for the first time, read it again for the first time. Joshua 24, 14 says, the mouth of Joshua, God's ultimately speaking, says, now therefore, fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in truth. and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt, and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell." And then that, part that is so known to us, I trust. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." What's it saying? It's what I've been driving at. You can choose this day. Will you choose the Egyptian gods that you've left behind? Will you keep them in your heart? Or will you enter into the land and choose other gods? or will you proclaim this day? As for my house, as for me and my house, we will worship the Lord our God, and we will serve Him. People of God, look to the Father, to the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and cast off the gods which are before, and the gods which are behind. And look to heaven, to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. Look to the Holy Spirit who is sent to you from the Father and from the Son. And seek to worship the one true God, in spirit and in truth. And confess your sin to him today. Do not witness against yourself with only a mouth profession. witness before the people of God and before God Himself that you will honor the one true God and with your hearts you will even serve Him. Let us pray. Thank you for tuning in. 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