GOD ONLY

EXODUS 20:3

APRIL 30, 2006


Ancient Egypt was immersed in gods; polytheism became a way of life. One looked to the fertility gods to bless the crops as well as the mother's womb. He looked to the god of rain to shower the seeds he planted and the storm gods to avert their wrath long enough for harvest to take place. "They worshiped the gods of fields and rivers, light and darkness, sun and storms," comments Philip Ryken [Written in Stone, 58]. Sun god and moon god received devoted worship. Offerings and sacrifices, accompanied by fear and superstition, daily professed their belief in many gods. Out of this bondage Yahweh delivered Israel.
For four hundred years they had walked side-by-side with their polytheistic counterparts in Egypt. In the early days, when Joseph still ruled the land, their faith grew as they recognized the providence of Yahweh in elevating their brother and uncle as prime minister of Egypt. But he had long been mummified, as had their vibrant faith in Yahweh. Egyptian polytheism rubbed off on them. When they lacked rain during planting, they appealed to the rain god. When their wives were barren, they offered sacrifices to the fertility gods. Yahweh, the God of their fathers, seemed only a distant memory.
Then came the Exodus, and divine deliverance as well as divine revelation. God revealed Himself as omnipotent! They saw the evidence through the plagues and miracles in Egypt and in the dry ground crossing of the Red Sea. Victory over the Egyptian army came by Yahweh's hand alone.
In spite of the evidence before them, polytheism still lurked in their minds and habits. So God spoke, giving the foundational command in the Decalogue that without which, the others cannot be obeyed. "You shall have no other gods before Me." God declares His uniqueness as the only God and demands that He alone be worshiped.
Polytheism-the worship of many gods, still exists. And it's not just on the Asian or African continents. It's all around us! Gods of human imagination receive the devotion and worship of the masses, even from some who profess to believe the God of the Bible. The Lord God alone is God, and therefore, He alone is to receive our deepest love. That's what this first commandment is all about. It involves both prohibition and positive action. Let's consider what it means to have no other gods before Him.

I. God claims your affections
That's the simplest way that I can state this verse's content. Our affections, that is, our undivided loyalty and love of heart, mind, and strength, belongs only to the Lord revealed in Holy Scripture. John Calvin explains this affection in four headings: adoration, trust, invocation, thanksgiving [Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.8.16]. In adoration we worship, recognizing God's greatness and our dependence upon Him. We trust Him through Jesus Christ, so that we actively look to Him as our life. Invocation implies that we call upon Him, actively communing with Him and acknowledging His faithful care. Thanksgiving ascribes our gratitude to God for "every good and perfect gift." Moses, after restating the Decalogue for the second generation out of Egypt, summarized the divine claim for your affections in the words repeated by our Lord: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might" (Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37).
Someone might ask, "What right does God have to make such a claim on me?" Consider again the command, "You shall have no other gods before Me." That last phrase, "before Me," can be translated as "before My face," or "beside Me" or "over against Me." So, nothing is to compete with our devotion to the Lord God. His omniscience-that He sees all things, and His omnipresence-that He is everywhere present, implies that there are no persons or situations where God is not to be honored and reverenced as the only God. "Before Me" is personal. As Paul told the unbelieving and polytheistic Athenians of this God, "He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist" (Acts 17:27b-28a). As Calvin reminds us, "We are to drive away all invented gods and are not to rend asunder the worship that the one God claims for himself. For it is unlawful to take away even a particle from his glory" [Institutes, 2.8.16]. Consider why God can make such a claim as this first command.

1. Because of His uniqueness
There is no god like God! He is transcendent-far beyond us in character, perfections, being, and comprehension, and yet He is imminent as Paul stated, "He is not far from each one of us." This God displays His wrath against sin, and yet without any conflict or contradiction, shows love and kindness to sinners through the grace in Jesus Christ. He is altogether good, perfect in holiness, righteous and just in all that He does, hating iniquity, and rewarding faithfulness. He judges and condemns, yet He pursues sinners to forgive through satisfaction of His justice secured by His Son. He is "the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God," whom belongs "honor and glory forever and ever" (1 Tim. 1:17). "From Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever" (Rom. 11:36).
All of the gods of this world, such as they are by human contrivance and demonic empowerment, bow to His authority. When Moses and Aaron began to perform miracles before Pharaoh, the court magicians attempted to top the power of God. Aaron's rod turned into a serpent. The magicians' rods became serpents but Aaron's "swallowed up their staffs" (Ex. 7:12). Moses turned the waters of Egypt into blood; the magicians did the same with their pots of water. Moses covered Egypt with frogs; the magicians made frogs come on the land as well. Then Moses and Aaron struck the dust of the earth and it became gnats that tortured Egypt! The magicians used their magic arts to do the same but to no avail. They confessed, "This is the finger of God" (Ex. 8:19). Their gods fell powerless before the one true God!
When the Philistines captured the Ark of God in battle, they rejoiced and glorified their god, Dagon, by putting the Ark in Dagon's temple, an act that suggested that Yahweh was servant to Dagon. The next morning Dagon was on his face before the Ark. They thought it might be a fluke, so the priests lifted poor Dagon again on his pedestal. "But when they arose early the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord. And the head of Dagon and both palms of his hands were cut off on the threshold," (1 Sam. 5:1-5) showing him to be powerless before the one true God!
"Who is like the Lord our God, who is enthroned on high?" (Ps. 113:5)

2. Because you exist only by His pleasure
God identified Himself before issuing the first commandment. "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me." As the Lord God, He is Sovereign, exercising wise and faithful rule over the universe. This Sovereign created the universe; nothing exists apart from His creative and sustaining power. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Think of the vastness of the universe with our galaxy just one of an infinite number, spanning millions of light years in distance, and composed of an infinite number of stars, asteroids, and heavenly bodies. Everything in the heavens has its place. The universe staggers our imagination by its orderliness, beauty, and grandeur. Yet there is not a star in the vastness of the universe that the Lord did not create. For that matter, no speck of dust on an asteroid exists apart from His creative might!
Look at the complexity of human life existing in the complex ecosystem of our planet. The earth's axis tilts at just the right angle, its speed just right to complete the daily and yearly cycles, and its distance from the sun just right so that we do not burn or freeze. The gravitational pull is just right so that we can walk and not bounce or float away! Your body displays God's creative handiwork. An infant, so tiny in height and weight, is still so complex that the medical and scientific world combined has not mastered it. No wonder David declared, "I am fearfully, and wonderfully made!"
Your existence at any moment is by God's pleasure. Though we may think of ourselves as healthy and robust, we're actually quite fragile. In some parts of the world, the bite of a tiny mosquito can subdue a grown man. Certain bacteria that chances upon a person can take his life. A tiny gelled mass can surge toward the heart and result in death. One mutant cell multiplies into a life-threatening disease. A slight mistake with a steering wheel or a moment of neglect can end in tragic death. You are fragile! You exist at this moment by the pleasure of God. If He were to withdraw His providential care from you, in that moment you would die. And in that moment of death you would face the Sovereign Lord who judges the living and the dead. Dare any of us be so arrogant as to worship other gods? He claims your affections because He alone is worthy to be worshiped as Lord and God.

II. God rejects other gods
One obvious question has to arise in our thoughts. If God is the only God, then how can other gods exist? Do they or do they not exist? Well, yes and no! These gods do not exist as the living God but rather they exist by human imagination and ingenuity. That does not mean that they have no power or strength, since the demonic stands behind idolatry and false gods. Yet these gods are gods of human dependence. Like Dagon that had to be lifted by his priests or the gods of Egypt that had to be awakened each morning, washed, and fed by their priests, without devotees these gods do not exist at all! They exist in relation to particular people. If those people no longer exist, then the god ceases existence. Where is Baal or the Asteroth today that were so popular among ancient Canaanites? They ceased existence with the Canaanites.
But our God is much different. He is self-existence. He does not need us to feed Him or put Him into a temple or even to worship Him. If no one worshiped God (an impossibility since He has secured a people for Himself by His sovereign grace), that would not affect His existence, power, glory, or honor for one moment. Unlike the gods of the world that subsist through superstition, manipulation, heavy-handedness, and violence, our God is one that shows mercy to sinners and gives grace to all that trust Him. This God above all earthly gods rejects other gods. "You shall have no other gods before Me," the Lord God declares.
Is it presumption on God's part to make such a declaration? What if a person has no interest in God or in spiritual matters? On the contrary, every person has a spiritual capacity. "He has also set eternity in their hearts," explains Ecclesiastes 3:11. Man has an interest, and sometimes even a longing, for the infinite and invisible. Even in primitive areas of the world, there is always some acknowledgement of the transcendent. Though he does not seek God in truth apart from grace, man goes after some kind of god, some aberration of the living God or some false god or pursues some philosophy or material or sensual object as god. The living God can only be known through Jesus Christ who declared, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by Me" (John 14:6). The god of this world, Satan, blinds "the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ" (2 Cor. 4:4). Brian Edwards is right: "Although Satan has written his graffiti all over God's creation, deep down human nature knows there is a God" [The Ten Commandments for Today, 74]. And so man substitutes gods of his own depraved desires and imagination in the place of the living God. Yet, man who alone in the created order was breathed upon by God so that he became a living soul (Gen 2:7), does not find satisfaction in the gods of this world. The God-given inclination for worshiping the Creator and the Transcendent, though twisted and warped by our sinfulness, cannot be fulfilled until one knows God through Jesus Christ.

1. Other gods people play
The first commandment is categorically clear: "You shall have no other gods before Me." Every person has a god. Ligon Duncan points out, "That which we love and serve and desire and long after and aim for and strive for and think of the most is our god" ["No God But God," March 3, 2002, First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, MS]. Even when someone claims that he does not believe in any god, he certainly devotes himself to a god or gods. His god may not have a religious title or prescribed liturgy for worship but he worships something nonetheless.
He may be an anti-theist, that is, one that is purposefully against God, denying even the existence of the Eternal God. He lines up his reason for why God cannot exist. Yet, unless he is himself omniscient, he lacks the sufficient wisdom and knowledge to know if God does not exist! "Finite intelligence can never be sure that there is no infinite intelligence," explained William Plummer in the 19th century [Law of God, 113]. He does not acknowledge the existence of God because he does not want God to exist. He demonstrates the endless self-centeredness of his life and the darkness of his mind. Plummer adds, "No man is so blind as he who does not wish to see" [112].
He may be an atheist, differing from the anti-theist only by the shading of his attitude. He may claim atheism due to skepticism about the existence of God. Because he cannot prove God's existence through some scientific formula, he just cannot believe that He exists. He cannot accept the necessity of divine revelation as the only means of knowing God. The atheist often likes to discuss the existence of God, flattering himself that he has out-calculated his opponent by wit and reason. His atheism may even be a means to draw attention to himself so that others might fancy him as one of unusual brilliance. At the bottom of his denial of God may be his own desire to be the object of worship and reverence. He must deny the voice of conscience that offers evidence of an inner law, and if an inner law, there must be a lawgiver that inscribed it upon the mind. He must also not give consideration to the end of his atheism, that if the rest of the world followed his lead in denying God, there would be a moral vacuum sweeping the world into a rapidly downward spiral. As one writer put it, "If atheism be true, annihilation would be the object of most earnest longing to all thinking men" [Nevins quoted by Plummer, 116].
Popular in our day is pluralism, the belief that there are many different gods and belief systems of equal value and validity in the world. This runs the gamut from accepting pantheism that sees God in everything to polytheism that worships multiple gods. Ligon Duncan points out that pluralism must have relativism as its starting point. That is, with relativism, one believes that "there is no truth," therefore pluralism accepts different beliefs since no absolute truth exists [Duncan, page 3]. So it doesn't matter what you believe or who you believe or how you worship-just as long as you do not make claim to the only truth or the only God. Brian Edwards further observed, "Pluralism asserts that all religions are really heading for the same destination but that we give the destination, and the route to it, different names. It may be Heaven, Nirvana or Paradise via Krishna or Buddha or Allah, or we may just call him the Great Architect, or Gaia the great mother goddess of earth" [57].
Some practice what I would term, quasi-theism. By that I mean, they borrow a little language from the Bible, use the appropriate titles for God, but change the biblical explanation for God's nature, God's ways, and God's glory. This kind of false god, and indeed it is a false god if not the God revealed in Holy Scripture, shows up even in churches. Mark Dever was leading a doctoral seminar when he encountered a quasi-theist. "I had made a statement in a doctoral seminar about God," Dever said. "Bill responded politely but firmly, that he liked to think of God rather differently. For several minutes Bill painted a picture for us of a friendly deity. He liked to think of God as being wise, but not meddling, compassionate but never overpowering, ever so resourceful but never interrupting. This, said Bill in conclusion, is how he liked to think about God." Mark responded, "Thank you Bill for telling us so much about yourself, but we are here today to study about God" [as told by Ligon Duncan, page 4].
Others are anthropo-theists, worshiping what Joy Davidman called "beast gods" [Smoke on the Mountain, 28]. Since anthropos is the word for man, these are gods that center on man's desires. They may be gods of materialism or gods of sex or gods of partying or gods of ambition or gods of greed or gods of entertainment or gods of sports or gods of technology. The devotee is absorbed with his particular man-centered gods. My friend Dominique DiPiazza played bass guitar in a well-known jazz band, and was considered by many in the music world as one of the top bass guitarists in the world. His music was his god. But once the gospel penetrated his worldly mind, he repented and trusted in Christ as Savior and Lord. Because everything in his world focused on his bass guitar, he laid down his bass and would not pick it up for several years until he felt confident that he could play to the glory of God and no longer worship at the shrine of his music.



2. Brooks no rival
The living God will brook no rival. Adam and Eve pursued a different god and faced destruction. Solomon embraced gods of possessions, sex, and worldly pleasure, leading to the eventual collapse of his kingdom. "You shall have no other gods before Me." God did not mince words in this command! To honor, reverence, and worship something or someone as god, is to deny God who alone is worthy of such honor by His creation. Because He is full of glory, He will not share that glory with another. To do so would be a denial of His infinite majesty and omnipotence; it would be attributing glory to that which has no glory. The God that cannot lie and that cannot act unrighteously, will not share His glory with another. To give glory to another god is to disavow that God alone is Creator and Sovereign over the universe. It is to proclaim another in the place that belongs only to God.
To have another god before the only God is to provoke Him to holy jealousy. Calvin explained, "This is like a shameless woman who brings in an adulterer before her husband's very eyes only to vex his mind the more" [2.8.16].
There are two simple tests to determine if you are provoking God's jealousy and therefore His judgment. First, is the love test. What do you love? Philip Ryken quotes Origen from the 3rd century, "What each one honors before all else, what before all things he admires and loves, this for him is God." Ryken adds, "It only makes sense: We are called to love God with all our hearts and all our minds, but if instead we give our love to someone or something else, then we are serving some other god" [66].
The second test is the trust test. Martin Luther said, "Whatever thy heart clings to and relies upon, that is properly thy God" [quoted by Ryken, 66]. So, what do you trust or cling to? "To trust any thing more than God, is to make it a god," stated the Puritan Thomas Watson [quoted by Ryken, 66].

III. God can and must be worshiped
God could have used us to amuse Himself as the Greek pantheon of gods is portrayed. He could have used us as His pawns for setting up an earthly government as the god of Islam does in destructive and violent ways. He could have annihilated us after some time, I suppose, yet not after He breathed into us the breath of life so that we became living souls, and consequently, eternal creatures distinct from the rest of creation. God can be worshiped but not on our terms.

1. Only through His Son
You cannot know the God that created you and sustains your every breath apart from His Son, Jesus Christ the Lord. The transcendent God is unknowable unless He reveals Himself to you in the good news of Jesus Christ. Though religious leaders, the rulers, elders, and scribes of Israel were told by Peter, "And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). We are too sinful and unrighteous to offer worship to the infinitely holy God. We lack the righteousness to approach God. Unless we have sufficient righteousness to commend us to God, He will reject every effort on our part. But He is a God of grace that provided righteousness through Jesus Christ-God Incarnate-bearing away His judgment against us through His death on the cross and imputing His righteousness to our account.

2. "Choose you this day"
Jochem Douma points out the emphatic positive truth of the first commandment. "Choosing for the Lord always means making a choice that excludes every other possibility" [The Ten Commandments, 18]. That's how Joshua explained it to the people of Israel after they had conquered Canaan. "Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:14-15, italics added).
Having no gods before the Lord is a definite choice-a decisive act and decisive life. This is not just a one-time action but a regular part of life. Just as John warned believers toward the end of the 1st century, "Little children, guard yourselves from idols," (1 John 5:21), so this first command is a daily practice for us. Every day we decide to have no other gods before the only true God whom we have come to know through Jesus Christ the Lord.

Conclusion
Douma is correct: "We never get rid of idols if we are not really converted to the only true God" [32]. All of our efforts will be futile. We will change our thoughts of God until He agrees with our own desires for living, unless we've been born of God's Spirit. Remember, "Your god," as J.I. Packer has written, "is what you love, seek, worship, serve, and allow to control you" [The Ten Commandments, 31]. Is the only God, who has revealed Himself to us through Jesus Christ, your God?

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