Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:6-10
Video Link: https://youtu.be/0ZRwCAwoBDg
Structure:
- Introduction
- God’s grace
- God’s uniqueness
- God’s character
- Conclusion
Introduction:
Good morning everyone.
Seeds are powerful things. Small, compact, seeds contain the DNA of the plant. From one tiny seed much fruit is produced.
Today we continue our series in Deuteronomy by focusing on the first of the ten commandments. If the law of Moses is like a tree, then the ten commandments are the seed from which the tree of the law grows.
The ten commandments are at the core of God’s covenant with Israel. They contain the DNA of how Israel were to relate with God. From Deuteronomy 5, verses 6-10, God Almighty says to Israel…
6 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 7 “You shall have no other gods beforeme. 8 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 10 but showing steadfast love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.
Sometimes the ten commandments are described as the Decalogue or the ‘ten words’. This tells us the commandments are not just a list of rules. They reveal something of the soul or the Spirit of God.
Today’s verses, for example, tell us about God’s grace, God’s uniqueness and God’s character. Let’s start then at the beginning, with God’s grace.
God’s grace:
When you cook a meal, the order in which you do things is very important. For example, if you are crumbing a piece of meat (maybe a fillet of fish or some chicken tender loins or a nice cut of schnitzel), you always start by coating your protein in flour first, then dipping it in an egg wash, before rolling it in bread crumbs and frying in the pan.
If you cook the meat first and then try to coat it in bread crumbs after, it doesn’t taste so good. You do the frying last to give the meal texture and flavour.
Enjoying a good relationship with God is a bit like cooking. You have to get things in the proper order or it just doesn’t taste right.
When it comes to friendship with God, grace must always come first, then obedience can follow. Trying to obey God without grace is like cooking your meat first and then putting it through an egg wash later.
God does not start his ten words with a command. He begins, in verse 6, with a reminder of his grace, saying…
6 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
You see, God gave his law after he had redeemed Israel from slavery. God saved the people and set them free first, then he made a covenant with them. Israel’s redemption from Egypt was not conditional on them obeying God’s commands. God didn’t say, “I’ll set you free if you obey me”. Grace came first.
Obedience grows out of the soil of God’s grace. This means the commandments (and indeed the whole law) are part and parcel of God’s grace.
The commandments are an invitation to an ongoing friendship with God. They show us how to related with God in a right way.
We might think of God’s grace as a bridge across an otherwise unpassable ravine. God’s grace provides a way for us to cross over to the other side, to God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom is where God is obeyed freely and willingly out of gratitude and love.
Time and time again we read in the gospels how Jesus put grace first and in so doing left the door of obedience open for people to walk through. In Mark 2, four men lower their paralyzed friend through the roof of a house in faith that Jesus would heal him.
The very first thing Jesus says to the man is, ‘Your sins are forgiven’. Grace comes first. Then Jesus heals the man, telling him to pick up his mat and walk. Grace upon grace.
What does the man do with that grace? He obeys Jesus in faith. He picks up his mat and he walks off. Beyond that we are not told. What we do know is the grace of forgiveness and the grace of healing has built a bridge to God for the man. That same grace has also opened a way for others to follow in faith too.
This idea of grace coming before obedience is a beautiful thought, but it is difficult for us to accept. It goes against the grain of this world. We are raised to do the mahi (the work) then reap the reward. We want to pay our own way and not be in anyone’s debt. While that approach is necessary and applauded in the work place, it does not transfer well to our relationship with God.
We can’t earn God’s favour, we can only receive it humbly. We can’t obey God in our own strength. Obedience to God’s commands grows out of the soil of God’s grace. Or to put it another way, grace empowers obedience. God’s grace gives us the moral currency to invest in a faithful relationship with God.
God’s uniqueness:
Sometimes when you go to the movies they have quiz questions on the screen before the movie plays. Here’s a movie trivia question for you.
Which 1986 film, starring Sean Connery, is famous for the line: ‘There can be only one’? Is it A.) Jerry Maguire B.) The Empire Strikes Back, C.) The Breakfast Club or D.) Highlander?
If you answered D.) Highlander, then well done. Highlander is a cult classic.
Now, to be clear, the movie Highlander has nothing to do with Deuteronomy. But, when it comes to God, there can be only one. This is what the first commandment is getting at. In verses 7-9 the Lord says…
You shall have no other gods before me. 8 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them;
Now some of you may be thinking, ‘Wait a second. Don’t verses 7-9 cover the first two commandments?’ Well, yes and no.
Traditionally, there are two main ways of numbering the commandments. The more ancient way, which goes back thousands of years and is used by the Jews, Catholics and Lutherans, is to categorize verses 7-9 as the first commandment and to treat verse 21 (about not coveting) as two separate commandments.
The more recent tradition, which dates back only 500 years to the reformation, thinks of verse 7 as the first commandment and verses 8-9 as the second commandment. While verse 21 is treated as a single commandment.
The Jewish and Catholic tradition (the more ancient tradition) is better, in my view. It makes more sense. But it’s not a deal breaker. If you want to follow the reformed numbering, then we will still serve you communion next week.
The more important thought to grasp here is that the first commandment (as written in verses 7-9) points to the uniqueness of God. The Lord God Almighty is one of a kind. There is no other. There can be only one.
The command, ‘You shall have no other gods before me’,is stated positively in Deuteronomy 6 which reads…
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
As we heard three weeks ago, loyalty and voluntary obedience is at the heart of loving God. The Lord God wants an exclusive relationship with his people, like a warm faithful marriage. God Almighty will not share us with any other god.
Returning to Deuteronomy 5, verses 8-9 explain what the Lord means when he says, ‘You shall have no other gods before me’. Basically, you should not make or bow down to any graven image.
In the ancient world, pagans made little statues out of wood or stone as a tangible representation of the gods they worshipped. Psychologically, these idols held a kind of superstitious influence over people. In reality though, idols have no actual power. They are dead.
God does not want to be associated with pagan religious practices. He is unique, one of kind. God is unlike anything in all of creation. God is holy, set apart.
There is a mystery to God. We cannot know all there is to know about the Lord. We can only know what he chooses to reveal about himself. Any image we human beings come up with (no matter how well intentioned) is always going to fall short of a true representation of God. God is not defined by us.
Another reason God forbids the making of images for worship is that the Lord himself has made human beings in his own image. Unlike statutes of wood or stone, we human beings are living breathing creatures, capable of feeling joy and pain. Able to think and act and make decisions.
God’s intention, his ideal, is for creation to see the image of the divine in the way human beings care for each other and the environment.
It would be fair to say humanity has fallen a long way short of accurately representing the image of God throughout history. But there is one man who shows us very clearly what God is like and that is Jesus.
As the apostle Paul writes in Colossians 1…
15 The Son [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
God does not want us to make an image of him because Jesus is the perfect image of God and we can’t improve on that.
If you look around the inside of our church auditorium you will notice, we don’t have a lot of images. Just the crosses and the fish symbol. You would not expect to find statues of Mary or Jesus or the saints in a Baptist church, although you might in a Catholic Church.
Interpretation of the command to not make a graven image or bow down to it has been a point of division among Christians throughout the centuries. At various times in church history people have taken offense at the images displayed in churches and destroyed them in a mood of holy indignation.
The Eastern Church got around this issue by not making 3D statutes but simply painting two dimensional icons instead.
To be fair to our Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sister, the images in their church buildings (whether they be two dimensional or three dimensional) were not intended to be objects of worship. They are simply a visual way of telling the gospel story.
Most people, at that time, could not read but they could still get the gist of the gospel by looking at the images. We might think of these images as a form of evangelism.
Rather than criticizing the way other people worship God, we would be better to take the plank out of own eye first. God expects our exclusive worship. That means he wants us to put him first in everything.
God wants us to put him first, not because he needs our praise, but because he loves us and wants the best for us. You see, to worship anything other than the one true God is to diminish ourselves. When we worship the Lord Almighty, we uphold our God given dignity and value as human beings.
In the gospels, Jesus called people to put God first in ways which seem quite shocking to us. He once said to a rich young ruler: ‘Sell all you have, give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven, then come follow me’.
The rich man went away sad. He did not bow down to idols as such, but Jesus’ challenge put a spot light on the fact that he worshipped his wealth alongside God.
It’s not that money is bad. But if we love money more than God, then we have a problem.
Perhaps the biggest idol of our time is what some call the ‘sovereign self’. We might also describe this idol as personal freedom or hyper-individualism. It is the idea that we must discover our deepest desires and longings and then do all we can to realize them, whatever the cost. [1]
There is nothing wrong with having desires or longings or a dream to pursue in life. These things are natural and may give us a certain joy or energy for a time. The problem comes when we enthrone what we want, and put it first, ahead of what God wants.
Most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, don’t always know what we want. We might think we want to be a movie star or a rock god or the owner of a winning Lotto ticket. We might think we want this girl or that boy to love us or to get that promotion at work or to score a century at Lord’s, but then (with the passing of time) we find we actually want something else. We never seem to find what we are looking for.
The sovereign self is a false god. It is an illusion, a mirage. The sovereign-self fosters false hope. It misleads us.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus dethroned the idol of sovereign self on our behalf, when he said: ‘Not my will Father, but your will be done’. Jesus did not want to go the cross and suffer separation from God, but he put aside what he wanted in a spirit of loving obedience to God the Father. And God gave Jesus his life back, only better than before.
To become a Christian is to topple the idol of self and let Jesus sit on the throne of our heart. To let Jesus be in charge. To let Jesus define who we are. To let Jesus bestow dignity and honour on us. And to find meaning in serving Jesus’ purpose.
What things in your own life compete with the worship of God? What needs to change for God to take first place? If you are not sure, ask God to show you. Sometimes our idols are hidden in our shadow side (our blind spot) where we can’t see them. We may not be aware.
The ten words of Yahweh reveal something of God’s soul or Spirit. Verse 6 of Deuteronomy 5, reminds us of God’s grace. Verses 7-9a point to the uniqueness of God and verses 9b-10 shine a light on God’s character.
God’s character:
Many centuries ago, after the time of Moses but before the time of Jesus, during the reign of the Persian Empire, there lived a philosopher named Heraclitus. Heraclitus influenced Plato who in turn influenced the Western way of thinking.
Not much of Heraclitus’ work has survived but one of his quotes, which made it to the internet age, reads: Character is destiny.
Character has to do with the way someone thinks, feels and behaves. Character describes the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual. To say that ‘character is destiny’ implies a belief that the choices a person makes have an influence over the course their life takes.
Reality, as we know, is never that simple. Life is complex. There is much which is outside of our control. But we usually have some say over how we respond to our circumstances and that’s where character comes in.
In verses 9-10 Yahweh tells us why we must worship him and him alone.
He says: for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 10 but showing steadfast love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
The Lord describes himself here as a jealous God. You may remember from recent sermons that jealousy is different from envy. Envy is when we want something that does not belong to us. Jealousy, on the other hand, is that urge or that intense feeling to protect what rightfully does belong to us.
So envy is a bad thing and jealousy is a good thing.
Because God is wholly unique, because he is one of a kind, the only true God, he will not share the worship that rightfully belongs to him with anyone or anything else. There can be only one.
Following this train of thought, God will not share his image with anything else either. We human beings are made in God’s image. So God will not share us with an idol or a graven image.
On the face of it, those words about ‘punishing the children for the sins of the fathers’ sound grossly unfair. These verses need to be understood in the wider context of Scripture. The prophet Ezekiel clarifies any misunderstanding when he says…
20 The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them.
Heraclitus may well have been reading this verse from Ezekiel when he said ‘character is destiny’. Heraclitus and Ezekiel are in agreement here.
Ezekiel’s point is that God’s character is just and fair. And it is primarily God’s character that influences our destiny more than anything else. But the moral choices we make still matter. God takes our character into account.
Returning to Deuteronomy 5; verses 9 and 10 (when read together) seem to be saying: children and grandchildren may suffer in the short term because of the choices of their parents, but ultimately God’s character is heavily weighted toward love and mercy. For God shows steadfast love (hesed) to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. In other words, God’s love far outweighs his anger.
As we read in Psalm 30: For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favour lasts a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.
Conclusion:
Let us pray…
Father God, we thank you for your grace which enables us to obey you in faith and love. We thank you too for your uniqueness. There is no one like you. You alone are God. Forgive us for the times we enthrone ourselves. Keep us open to the work of your Spirit in developing our character, that we would better reflect your image. Through Jesus we pray. Amen.
Questions for discussion or reflection:
What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
- What is the relationship between God’s grace and obedience to God’s commandments? Why does grace need to come first? Can you think of times in the Bible (and/or in your own life) when God’s grace came first? What happened and what followed?
- In what ways does the first commandment point to the uniqueness of God?
- Why is it important to give our worship exclusively to the one true God? What things in your own life compete with the worship of God? What needs to change for God to take first place?
- Discuss / reflect on the statement, ‘Character is destiny’. What do you think this means? Does this statement resonate with Scripture &/or your own experience?
- Keeping in mind the wider context of Scripture, how are we to understand/interpret Deuteronomy 5:9-10? What do these verses reveal about the character of God?
- What aspects of your character has God’s Spirit been working on lately? What are the next steps of character development for you?
[1] Refer Timothy Keller’s book ‘Preaching’, page 133ff.
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