Rules for Kingdom Living, Part 2
Rules for Kingdom Living, Part 2 by Rev. L. John Gable
October 20, 2019
This morning we continue our series on the 10 Commandments titled “Rules for Kingdom Living.” We are looking at a body of laws and instructions given nearly 3500 years ago by Yahweh, the God of Israel, to Moses on Mt. Sinai after the children of Israel were delivered from the bondage of slavery in Egypt. While we have established that these words of guidance and instruction have helped to shape and inform every social order and ethical system since and have served to establish the moral underpinnings for the entire Western civilization, still we have to wonder, what do they have to say to us, today?
The first commandment lays the foundation for all that follow. “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me.” The Russian author Dostoyevsky once wrote, “If there is no God, then everything is allowed.” This is to say, if there is no God, then there is no absolute guidance for living, no firmly established moral code, no standard by which we can judge our actions, no ethic for our behavior. As we read at the conclusion of the book of Judges, if there is no God then “everyone is free to do what is right in their own eyes” which sounds like either utter chaos or total anarchy to me.
That is why this commandment must be the first. This is the testimony of Scripture and the witness of our own hearts: there is a God and this God has given us His rules and guidance for living in a right relationship with Him and with our neighbors, both then and now.
From the beginning of time people have always believed in God or in “the gods”, some kind of being or deity greater than themselves. This understanding seems to be hardwired in to our DNA, that there is something or someone larger than ourselves that deserves or demands our adoration, devotion, sacrifice or praise. For the previous 400 years the Children of Israel had lived, and suffered, under the oppression of the Egyptians who worshiped the gods Osiris and Isis, and their earthly representative the Pharaoh. The people in the land to which they were heading, the land of Canaan, worshiped many gods, each region having its own god represented by carved images and figurines which while localized to a particular area were also transportable. You move, you take your god with you, believing that that god had control over the productivity of the land and the fertility of your flocks. In to that religious worldview of polytheism the God of Israel makes this radical pronouncement: “I am the Lord your God”. Yahweh was calling this people into a unique and exclusive relationship with Him. Recall the covenant He had established with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob before, “I will be your God and will be My people”, which leads us directly to this commandment, “you will have no other gods before Me.” Yahweh, the God of Israel, was not a local deity who held sway over only a particular people or region, but is the One God above all other gods, the One God who is Lord over all creation, who alone must be worshiped and served. And this God made it very clear that if Israel was to survive, not only the sojourn through the wilderness, but as a nation, a people uniquely chosen by God for His Kingdom purposes, then she had to remain obedient to His exclusive call to singular worship and devotion, and I would caution us to be aware that we are given the same command because we live in a similar culture today. While tolerance and inclusiveness is very beneficial in many things it can be very damaging in our worship of God. Many hold to the tenet that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere, to each his/her own, so do as you please. That is not the teaching of the Biblical faith.
It is in the context of that primary and exclusive call to devotion that the second commandment follows, “You shall not make for yourself an idol…for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.” We may be quick to say, perhaps too quick to say, “That commandment doesn’t apply to me. I don’t have any idols in my house”, but before we write this one off as being too outdated or totally unrelated to us, let’s look more closely at what it means.
The Bible speaks very little about atheism, but it says a great deal about idolatry. Idolatry is simply misplaced devotion. It is the giving of power and priority to anything other than God. Idolatry is a cancer that can strike at the heart of even the most genuine religious expression as it gives ultimate value to that which is of penultimate worth. In short, we succumb to a subtle form of idolatry whenever we put our trust in people, places or things rather than in God: our trust for protection, for security, for meaning in life, for a sense of self-worth. We would never call any of these our “gods”, that sounds so primitive, but the fact of the matter is, we are tempted and seduced to worship many false gods of our own making: the idolatry of materialism, of nationalism, of ideology, of pride, prestige, wealth, the list goes on, and we have bought into the message. Each of us would do well to examine ourselves by asking this simple question, but admittedly not so simple to answer: Where do I look to find my sense of security, contentment, acceptance, my sense of meaning and self-worth? If we seek to find our sense of identity solely on what we do or what we have, rather than who we are as children of God, then we are committing idolatry. If we devote our lives to things which have no lasting value: our homes, our automobiles, our status in the community, the positions we hold or have held, then we are creating graven images. If we measure our sense of security for the future by the numbers in our bank accounts or the diversity of our portfolios, then we have made these means into ends and are practicing the 21st century version of idolatry. Sooner or later we all need to come to the understanding that “the one who dies with the most toys, still dies” and “our self-worth is not determined by our net worth.”
Of course we would never call any of these things our “gods”, but how different are these than the idols of yesterday made of wood or stone? Anything that comes between you and your relationship with God; anything that you hold of more value or importance; anything you look to for your sense of self-worth or security, save God and God alone, can only rightly be called an idol.
In our New Testament lesson we find Paul walking the streets of Athens and he sees that the city is full of idols, the old-fashioned carved kind. Addressing the philosophers of the day on the Areopagus, right at the foot of the Parthenon, the temple to Athena, he says, “I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god’.” The Athenians, like others in the Greco-Roman world, were addicted to their worship of the pantheon of gods and they wanted to make certain they didn’t inadvertently miss one, so they erected a monument to “an unknown god.” They were hedging their bets just to make sure all their bases were covered.
They had the same problem back then that their predecessors had before them that perhaps we have still today: it is easier to worship a god that we can see than it is a God we can’t see, even if we have to create it for ourselves. The Apostle Paul answered the objections of the Athenians by saying, “That which you worship as unknown I proclaim to you as known.” The day of worshiping idols made of wood or stone, concrete or steel, paper and ink, zeros and ones, is over. God has revealed Himself in a way that we can see and know and touch and understand. He has shown Himself in His Son, Jesus Christ, the One “in whom we live and move and have our being.” He alone is worthy of our worship and praise, there is no other. “I am Yahweh your God, you shall have no other gods before Me and you shall not make for yourself an idol”. Those are the first two of God’s rules for Kingdom living.
Billy Graham was once asked “Which of the 10 Commandments do you think is broken most often?” The interviewer expected him to say the one about adultery or stealing, the so-called “hot” sins, but instead he answered, “The third commandment: “you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses His name.” Just as the second commandment arises out of the first, so this commandment does as well. “Revere the name of the Lord and do not make wrongful use of it.” The Hebrew people had, and perhaps still have, such incredible reverence for God that they never even utter His name out loud. What of us? What kind of reverence do we have for the name of the Lord?
Do you remember the comedian George Carlin? It has been years since he first did his routine about the 7 words you can’t say on TV, and to honest I chose not to look up that routine for this sermon, but if I’m not mistaken, using the name of the Lord was not one of them. Isn’t that curious? Somehow as a society we have completely lost touch with this third commandment. While admittedly censorship has loosened considerably in recent years, and we are now hearing words that perhaps even George Carlin would have said are off limits, there is still some control over the use of profanity at least on mainstream television; but it amazes me that the one word that is strictly prohibited by the Biblical command is unquestionably allowed by the censors, and I wish I could blame it on the media alone, but we can’t. I hear good Christian people, the likes of you and me, casually, glibly, unthinkingly, sprinkling their conversations with references to God.
“You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain.” “In vain”, insincerely, idly, frivolously! Let me ask you to do a little “self-censoring” this week. Be mindful of your own speech patterns and note how often you, not your friends but how often you, use the name of the Lord inadvertently, casually, unnecessarily, or completely mindlessly. You may even surprise yourself, and not necessarily in a very good way.
The translation we read from this morning says, “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God.” A comment was made in the Pastors’ Bible study this past Wednesday that shed new light on this commandment for me. The observation was made that perhaps we break this commandment whenever we use God’s name or God’s Word erroneously; whenever we use God’s name or God’s Word to support our cause without stopping to consider whether it is God’s cause or is consistent with His Kingdom values. I was reminded that “even the devil can quote Scripture.” So to use God’s name or God’s Word out of context or inappropriately is yet another way to “misuse the name of the Lord.”
Periodically someone will apologize to me when they accidently invoke the Lord’s name in my presence and then want to apologize for it. I never know quite what to say, when “it doesn’t matter” doesn’t exactly seem to fit; but I remember hearing about one pastor who was having his car serviced when he overheard the mechanic say, “Oh, my God!” Looking up and seeing the pastor in his clerical collar he said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” The minister’s reply was so gracious and on point that I have remembered it for years. He said, “You don’t need to apologize to me. But you might want to be careful in how you use the Lord’s name. Sometime you might need Him and He won’t know whether you are swearing or praying.”
Are these ancient commandments obsolete and outdated? I don’t think so, not given that we are called to be God’s people and these are God’s rules for Kingdom living.