You Shall Have No Other Gods Before God

The American writer Mark Twain was best known for two of his books, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. But when he was alive, he was also well known for the fact that many times in public when people would make comments, he not only was very funny, but he was very sarcastic. And he would make public comments, and people would write these down. Now, over the years, no one's quite sure what he really said or what he didn't say.

He became sort of legend. But there's whole collections of Mark Twain's witticisms as he would say something in public because of what someone else had said. And there's one story about a man who was a very ruthless businessman, a very dishonest businessman, who just loudly declared one day that he was going to take a trip to the Holy Land, where he was going to climb to the top of Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments out loud.

And Mark Twain responded with, I've got a better idea. Why don't you stay here in Boston and keep them? He's sarcastic. The Ten Commandments have been actually a source of controversy for a long, long time. Now, we look at our secular society today, and we see where people don't want to post the Ten Commandments because they believe that it's imposing religion on people who don't want religion. But even the people who are Christians who say that they want to post the Ten Commandments, that say that the Ten Commandments are important, that it lays the foundation of our Western civilization, let's face it, most churches don't keep the Second or the Fourth Commandments.

So they argue they want to post them, but in reality, they're not keeping them. In fact, I've read studies with people who are practicing Christians to name the Ten Commandments, and every study I've ever seen, less than half the people could actually give you a summation of the Ten Commandments. So here we are in a world that claims that we should keep them, and yet, at the same time, many Protestants specifically believed that the law was done away with.

The Ten Commandments are no longer even applicable to Christians. When I, four months ago, I asked the congregations to what were ideas for sermons that people wanted to hear. One of the things that came up was a series of sermons on the Ten Commandments. How does each commandment apply, not only in the letter of the law, but how does it apply in the spirit of the law? What does each of these commandments say to us as Christians? That's what I'm going to start today as a series of sermons on the Ten Commandments.

Now, we'll do a few, take a break, do a few, take a break, but over the next three, four months, we will hopefully go through all ten of the Ten Commandments and look at them in terms of, okay, this is the letter of the law, but what does that mean to you and me to go beyond that?

Now, let me first start by stating something obvious. I'm going to take a little time to set this up by even going through some scriptures that we all know, a story in Exodus we all know, but it's important to go back and look at in order to really capture the giving of the Ten Commandments. The giving of the Ten Commandments, the way we see them given in Exodus 20.

We really need to understand the context in which they were given and what God was saying and what it meant to them and then what it means to us and how we can expand that out. So let's look at five reasons why the Ten Commandments are unique. Five reasons why the Ten Commandments are unique biblically, okay? This is looking at the Bible, why they are unique in the Bible. Now we'll talk about the first commandment. First of all, the Ten Commandments were given directly by God. Now, that's a statement. We know that. Okay, God gave down on Mount Sinai and gave the Ten Commandments.

No, we have to realize the enormity of this event. In fact, I'll read to you in a few minutes from a Jewish commentary that says it is the singular greatest event in the history of humanity because the enormity of what was happening. Let's go to Exodus 20. Or let's look at Exodus 19 first. Let's go to Exodus 19.

I think it is important sometimes we go through these stories, too, for our young people. They need to hear these over and over again. This is part of the history of what God has done with humanity and what God is doing. We need to know these stories.

Ancient Israel had been brought out of Egypt. God had destroyed the greatest superpower of the earth at the time. Absolutely destroyed them. Finally, opening the Red Sea and wiping out their army and then brought these Israelites, these slaves. People that were uneducated, for the most part, in terms of what the Egyptians would consider an important education. People who had never had freedom. People who couldn't make their own decisions about where they would live, what they would do for a living. People who had lived, for the most part, many of them, in poverty. Somebody else telling them what to do every day. They're brought out into the desert, where now there's no water, there's no food, and then they're brought to this place. Where God said He was going to take them. They get there, and they're in front of this mountain, and then something remarkable happens. Let's pick this up in verse 17. Exodus 19 verse 17. And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Now, you know, it's a simple statement, but I want you to think about this. Millions of people camped on a flat open area with this mountain there, and Moses says, give out the declaration to tell everybody to leave their tents, gather together all the families, all the clans, all the tribes, because we're going to go beat God.

And he means it literally. And so all these hundreds of thousands of people start moving towards this mountain. Verse 18. Now, Mount Sinai was completely in smoke. I want you to visualize this. You can't even see the top of this mountain. Black billowing smoke coming out of this mountain off the top of the mountain. Start looking at a volcano, you know, before it erupts.

Because the Lord descended upon it in a fire. So not only is this, you see this black smoke, but there was this giant ball of fire that came down to it. And now there's fire. Between the smoke, you can see fire. It looks like the rocks themselves are on fire.

I saw television, as you know, I love the History Channel. It's all programmed a while back where they explained that these were aliens. It was an alien spaceship that did this. And I thought, wait a minute, which does it take more faith? A creator god came down and talked to people. Or a little green man came down in a spaceship and talked to people. They weren't even denying Mr. Place. They just said they had a better explanation than this. Anyways, its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain equates greatly. Now these people are coming up to a mountain that's not only on fire, but it's just a rock mountain. And it's covered in smoke. They're in the middle of what feels like an earthquake as they get up to it. Billies of people huddled together. People clutching their children, excited, afraid. Think of all the emotions. They're going to meet God.

And verse 19, when the blast of the trumpet sounded long and became louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him by voice. Moses fighting. This supernatural trumpet just gets louder and louder. People are clutching their ears. Little kids are probably crying. And finally, Moses says, we're here. And his voice thunders out and says, good. You come up.

Verse 20, that the Lord came down upon Mount Suna, the top of the mountain. The Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain. Moses went up. He has to go tell him, wait a minute, tell everybody else not to come up. How do you come up? Suna goes up to the mountain. This is unique. In all of history, God has never talked to this many people in this way at one time. This is a unique event. This makes what he says next very unique. And of course, what he says next are the Ten Commandments. The second point, the Ten Commandments were the basis of God's covenant with ancient Israel. Now the covenant that God made with ancient Israel was more than the Ten Commandments, but the Ten Commandments were the core of what it was all about. Now this is very important. In fact, if you go through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, you'll see there were always things added to this covenant. Many times things were added to the covenant because they wouldn't obey. So, you know, more and more things were added as time went on. But this is the core of what it's all about. Look at Exodus 24. Because now God thunders out the Ten Commandments. It is so frightening to everyone. They're just petrified. In fact, the people actually ask Moses, you go talk to God for us. This is too frightening. He's going to kill us. You go talk to Him and we'll do whatever you say. Verse 12 of 24. Then the Lord said to Moses, Come up to me on the Mount, and there I will give you tablets of stone, and the law and commandments which I have written that you may teach them. He says, Come on up here. I'm going to give you the way to live. I'm going to give you basic laws on how to live. Verse 16. Now the glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered in six days. And on the seventh day He called on Moses out of the midst of the cloud. And the sight of the glory of the Lord was a consuming fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel. So Moses went into the midst of the cloud and went up into the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights. The people watched Moses disappear into that cloud, and he was gone, and he was gone for 40 days.

Now, I want you to remember who these people are, because this actually has to do with how the Ten Commandments are worded. These were slaves.

These were people who had been exposed to miracles that if you and I had been exposed to, we would be absolutely stunned. What is it like to walk through an open Red Sea? They had done that. I've never done that. What is it like to watch burning pieces of ice come down out of the sky? I've never seen that. They did. What's it like to watch darkness come over the land because God says it's going to happen? I never lived through that. They did. Remember who these people are? They're slaves who had seen things that in all of history are so catastrophic, so unimaginable. But how does the human mind even respond to it? And now they have heard God. They have seen a mountain on fire, and Moses goes up there and disappears. And what does God have him do? Well, first of all, God gave the Ten Commandments, and God wrote them down. Exodus 31. So he's up there with God. Exodus 31, verse 18. God talks to Moses for a while. And then verse 18 says, when he had made an end of speaking with him on Mount Sinai, he gave Moses two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone written with the finger of God. Now, this is also very important. God makes a covenant with these people, and he writes it down. You know, when you see everything else that is given to us by God, he has a human being write it down. He wrote it down. Now, that's unique in history. God took rock and wrote on it, and he gives it to Moses. Verse 1 of chapter 32. Now, when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down to the mountain, the people gathered together to err and said, Come, make us gods, and we can go back to the land of Egypt. They were lost without Moses. See, they had told Moses, we can't talk to God directly. This will kill us. We need an intercessor. Now, remember, when they're doing this, they're doing it at the base of a mountain that's on fire. For 40 days, it was on fire. For 40 days, the smoke was coming out of it. But who could go talk to that God? When he spoke, babies cried. Sheep ran away. People trembled. It was a power that they couldn't even imagine. Nobody could talk to him. Moses went up there and he got killed. We have to have an intercessor. We have to have something between us and that God. And so, they went back to pagan practices that they had found and learned in Egypt. Verse 15. Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the testimony were in his hand. The tablets were written on both sides, and on the one side and on the other side, they were written. Now, the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets. Moses was to make sure when he writes Exodus, we understand, this isn't something I wrote. God did this. But Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted. He said to Moses, there's a noise of war in the camp. But he said, it's not the noise of the shout of victory, nor the noise of the cry of the feet, but the sound of singing I hear. So it was, as soon as he came here in the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing. There's a big orgy here in front of this calf, this golden calf, this fake god. So Moses' anger became hot. He cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. Now, when you read through the life of Moses, you find the man had some anger management problems. I don't know at what point he took the two tablets of stone, written by the finger of God. He just spent 40 days in the presence of God, and he comes down and he sees people.

It makes him so angry, he breaks them.

I mean, there had to be, very quickly, this moment that was like, oh, no, what have I just done? God wrote these down, and I broke them. In anger, he broke them.

God would make them. Moses could back up on the mountain. Only this time, Moses had to chisel it out in the stone. That's when I wrote it for you one time, Moses. You broke them. You're going to do it yourself this time. Exodus 34.

I'm going through all this because this is actually important in looking at the way the Ten Commandments are written. Exodus 34, verse 27. Moses goes back up, and it says, Then the Lord said to Moses, Write these words, for according to the tenor of these words, I have made a covenant with you and with Israel. This is an agreement. It's a covenant. And this is the basis of the covenant. There would be more added to it, but this is the core of it. This is the law in which everything else will come from. So he was there with the Lord 40 days and 49. So I wonder at some point during that 40 days and 49s, he said, wow, I shouldn't have had to do this twice. I just would have controlled my temper. Because he's 40 days and 40 nights, he'd either ate bread or drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. In Hebrew, that doesn't say the ten commandments. It says, the ten words.

The concepts were so concise. They just called it the ten words. And what he was saying. Now, it was so, verse 29, that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony were in Moses' hands. They came down from the Mount that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. So now Moses comes down with the two tablets that he chiseled out. And he was in the presence of God. And when he comes down, everybody's running from him. Everybody's afraid of him. And somebody has to come up and say, you're radioactive. No. They wouldn't know what that was. They come up and they say, what's with you? Look at you, you're glowing! They're afraid of him. And he made him put a veil over his face because he literally frightened the people. And this became the basis of the covenant. In the Ark of the Covenant, the ten commandments were put in the Ark of the Covenant. The rest of the covenant was written in a book and placed beside the Ark of the Covenant. But the ten were in the covenant. The third point that makes them unique.

The ten commandments are revealed by God before Sinai. If you go through the book of Genesis and the first half of the book of Exodus, you will find it principle every one of the ten commandments. Jacob telling his family, throw out these idols.

God declaring himself as the Creator God is the only God. You even see the Sabbath. You'll see stealing showed his wrong. King killing Abel. Burger showed his wrong. You will find all of the commandments in one form or another revealed in principle before Sinai. That's real important. I never understand the argument that the Sabbath is the only one done away because it was given only when Sinai to Israel, when the Sabbath appears in Genesis 2 and in Exodus 16.

So the argument doesn't hold water. The fourth point. The ten commandments are taught in the New Testament. You will find all ten of the ten commandments taught in the New Testament. Including Jesus Christ, who through his teaching over and over again shows how to keep the Sabbath. He never once says you shouldn't keep it, but that's just zero to one. All of the ten commandments are taught in the New Testament. And then the fifth point. This is real important because you and I are under the New Covenant. You and I are under the New Covenant. Some people say, well see, the ten commandments were the covenant God made with ancient Israel, therefore the ten commandments don't apply to Christians.

But let's remember, the ten commandments are the core. It is the core of the law. We just read that. They were separate even from the rest of the law. They were put inside the ark. And in Jeremiah, in Jeremiah, they are told, Jeremiah 31, I will make a new covenant with you, and I will take my laws, and I will write them in your heart and in your minds. He didn't say I will create a new law, but the relationship between people and the law would change. And in Hebrews 8, a section of Jeremiah 31 is quoted. In fact, it's the longest quote of an Old Testament passage in the entire New Testament, and it's in Hebrews 8, and it's the explanation of those laws are written in our hearts and minds. So the ten commandments are the laws that are written into our hearts and minds. So they are relevant to Christians today, but they are relevant in a much more expanded way because we are told when we look through the New Testament that we're not only concerned with the letter of the law, but we are concerned with the spirit of the law. As we go through each of these ten commandments, we will be not only looking at the letter of what they teach, we will be looking at the spirit by which we are to live by them.

As we do, you are going to find that we're all commandment-breakers.

We may be observing the letter of God's law, but there's lots of times we're not observing the spirit of God's law. And we're not called just to keep the letter. So if we're really going to go look into the law of God, we're going to really have to understand what those laws tell us to do, what are required in them. So let's look at the very first commandment. Now let's go to Exodus chapter 20. Exodus chapter 20.

And God spoke all these words, saying, in Exodus 20 verse 1, verse 2, I am the Lord your God who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. Now, if you find any list of the ten commandments that are done by Christians, here's how the list starts. Number one, you shall have no other gods before me. Right? Now you can go into any Bible bookstore and buy a listing of the ten commandments, and the first commandment is, you shall have no other gods before me. If you got a list of the ten commandments put together by, sort of, the most rabbis, the Jewish tradition, that's not what it says. Here's what the first commandment is. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. They list that as the first commandment. Now, they don't change the commandments. They just say verse 3 and 4 together. Now, there's a reason they do that. We don't agree with it, but it's important to understand why. Remember, the ten commandments when they were first given in this form, like I said, they existed before, but this is the first time they appear in this exact form, are given to a specific group of people as a covenant with them. And then it's the foundation of the law that's in the new covenant. So we have to understand the context in which it's given to them, and the context of how it's written into our hearts and minds of God's Spirit. Why would they say that? Why would they say the first commandment is, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage? The reason they say that is because the belief is that we were a bunch of slaves taken out of slavery. We were nothing brought across the desert to meet God. And the first thing he said to us was, I'm the one who brought you here.

And that is the basis of all commandments.

I disagree with their interpretation of how they separate that, but I agree with the point.

I agree with the point. They understand this was given. Now remember, they see this as the greatest single event in the history of humanity. Why were they part of it? Because the Lord their God brought them there. Interesting viewpoint. I don't read from commentaries very often, but I'm going to read to you from Socino commentary. I'm starting at the front of the book. Hebrew reads what we consider backwards. So the book starts at the back of the book. And since the text of the Bible is in Hebrew and this commentary starts at the back and moves forward. So if I want to go to Genesis, I have to go to the back of the book. And I get to Deuteronomy because this is the Pentateuch. I go to what we call the front of the book. So fortunately, the commentary part is in English because I would not even pretend to read the Hebrew. Listen to what they say. Now this is traditional Jewish teaching. I am the Lord your God. They say this is the first commandment. I am the Lord your God. Jewish tradition considers this verse as the first of the ten words. Remember I said it's called the ten words? The first of the ten words and deduces from it a positive precept. This is another thing about the Ten Commandments that we have to learn. We see the Ten Commandments only as a bunch of don'ts. Don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And if we have to see it in its positive context, God does not tell you. You think about children. If all you tell children is no, no, no, no, no. How many children their first word is no? It's like that's a pretty negative world to live in. Now we're going to see the reason God gave these to them because He tells them later. I gave them to you for this reason. So we can't understand His reason. So here is the positive precept that these Jewish rabbis who do not believe in Jesus Christ pull out of 3,000 years, well over 3,000 years, about 3,000 years of studying the Ten Commandments. Here's what the First Commandment is all about, to believe in the existence of God. There it is! To believe in the existence of God.

That's the First Commandment. I'm just saying, I am the Lord your God. There are no other gods besides me.

It goes on, the God adored by Judaism is not an impersonal force. It's not an it. It's not nature or world reason. The God of Israel is the source not only of power and life, but of consciousness, personality, moral purpose, and ethical action. The second phrase, they say it's really important, is your God. The emphasis is on your. He is the God not merely of the past generations, but of every individual soul in each generation. This is your God. This is personal. Who brought you out of the land of Egypt? God here is not designated. I thought this was a very interesting point, because I never thought of this before. God is not designated creator of heaven and earth. Israel's God has seen not merely in nature, but in the destinies of men. He has revealed himself to Israel in a great historical deed, the greatest in the life of any people. Remember, they see this as the central point of life.

This is where God came in. It is something so unique. The first thing he said is, believe in me, because I brought you here. See, I disagree with them. I don't think, verse 3, verse 2 is the first commandment. I do believe it's the preamble to the first commandment. I think to understand the first commandment in this context, you have to read the first sentence that God spoke. Remember, the first sentence he spoke wasn't, I'm the Lord your God, to have no other gods before me. That's not the first thing he said. The first thing he said was, I'm the one who brought you here.

I brought you here. I'm the only God. Remember, they just watched him destroy all the gods and goddesses of Egypt. He just destroyed paganism.

And now he says, I think I got you here. I'm the God who got you here, and I'm the only God. He goes on, and the rest of the sentence is very interesting. He says, the God who saved Israel from slavery had a moral claim as their benefactor and redeemer on their gratitude and obedience.

Because he was the God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and because he said, I am the only God, he had an absolute moral claim to say, you will now not only obey me, you will be thankful for what I'm going to tell you to do.

Now, let's set that aside, but I'm going to come back to some points that the Jewish rabbis make to look at this and what it means to us today. Let's look at what we've learned really by just looking at these first statements. The first commandment reveals that God, the God of Israel, is the only God. So you can't talk about the God of the New Testament without talking about the God of the Old Testament.

So the God of the Old Testament. Now, when Jesus came and talked about His Father, who is God?

Two, the first commandment reveals that God is involved in human affairs. There is in this command to believe in Him and to trust Him. I got you here. I'm the only God.

There is in here a command to trust Me. This is all about faith. And we think law and faith, they're opposite of each other. The very first commandment is all about faith. I brought you here and I'm the only God. There's no other beside me.

So you can see why they do what they do. But it's also a shame that the Christian versions drop out the first sentence because it loses the context of what these people were going through, which helps us begin to really understand the commandments even more. You see, well, that preamble doesn't mean anything to the church, does it? I'm the Lord God who brought you out of Egypt. If you study the symbolism of the New Testament, it sure does. In fact, we don't have an exact preamble, but if we did, it would go something like this. I am the Lord your God who overcame your taskmaster, your Pharaoh, the God of this world. And I broke the back of the great spiritual power that rules this world to bring you out of slavery, to bring you to me so that I may write my laws in your heart and in your mind. There's the preamble to the Ten Commandments of the New Testament. See, all the symbology just puts them together. Now, I made that up, but you all know what I'm talking about. You see what I mean? You all, oh yeah, that's true. Egypt is a type of sin, and we see we know that Satan is the God of the world. He's a type of Pharaoh, and slavery. Paul talks all about how we're slaves to sin. That's right. That's our preamble. The days of the 11 bread and the Passover, the way that we keep them, that's the preamble to the spirit of the Ten Commandments. I am the God who brought you here. We will never really keep the Ten Commandments until we start with, He is the God who brought me here. I didn't write the Ten Commandments. You didn't write the Ten Commandments. Moses did write the Ten Commandments when he did the second time. That's because he broke them the first time. God gave the Ten Commandments, and God never wants us to forget He's the one who brought us here. I am the Lord your God. And I am the Lord of the Creator of the universe. I am the Lord your God. There's something so personal in this First Commandment.

Think about it. God's going to talk to the first time to the collective descendants. Here they are of Abraham. He told Abraham, I'll bring them out of slavery someday. I'm going to talk to him. The first thing he says is, I'm your God. You, me, these are personal pronouns.

It's a personal statement.

And so God is involved in human affairs. There's the problem with the Jewish viewpoint. You know, everything I read from the Jewish viewpoint basically is correct except one thing. The greatest event in human history is when God stood on Mount Sinai and gave the Ten Commandments. No, it's not. The greatest event in human history so far is when Jesus Christ became flesh, lived and died for us and was resurrected so that the Ten Commandments could be written in our hearts and minds. It's a greater event. They don't know about that event so they don't realize. Now, they're talking about the second greatest event. We understand the first greatest event. There's actually one greater coming because he's coming back.

See, we understand that there's a greater event that has happened. But it brings us back to these Ten Commandments. The first commandment is about loyalty to God.

I am your God. Now, let's go to Deuteronomy 10. There's another place where this is said in the law and Jesus uses this in his teaching. Deuteronomy 10, verse 12.

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and to keep his commandments of the Lord and his statutes, which I commanded you today. Why? For your good. This is why God said, I brought you here. I am the Lord your God. I'm doing this for your good. This is his motive. His motive wasn't because he hated Egyptians. His motive wasn't because he wanted to bring these people out there and make these primitive people bow down to worship him. He did it for their good. This is about our loyalty to God. That's what the first commandment is about. It's just not accepting him as God, believing his God. It's about our loyalty to I am the Lord your God. Then there's one last point I want to bring out here before I talk about how we break this commandment. When you look at, once again, the Jewish commentaries, they say that the Ten Commandments are all about freedom. The first commandment specifically, I brought you out of the house of bondage. Once again, they don't separate that sentence.

So they believe this is all about how not to be slaves.

Well, the Ten Commandments are about how all you and I can not be slaves to sin. Now, how do we break this? How do we break the first commandment? Well, there's obvious ways. I'll mention the obvious ways. Now, we'll talk about a way that's not so obvious, a way that's so easy for you and me to break this commandment and not even know we're doing it. Not even think about it. First, I suppose, would be atheism. That's probably the greatest way to break the commandment. I just don't believe in God. All the commandment is, you must believe in me. So there's the first way to break it. The second way to break it would be the acceptance of other gods. There are no other gods beside me. Well, this is the great danger of the New Age movement that's so popular today and that more and more surveys show that people under 30 are believing in mass. It'll be the majority in just a short period of time the way it's growing. And that is, all good people and all religions lead to the same God. All good people and all religions lead to the same God. Well, the first commandment doesn't allow you to believe that. It just doesn't allow it. It's not what God says. The third is superstition or the involvement in the occult or astrology or witchcraft in which we take the evil spirits of this world because there is an evil spirit world. Saint is the God in this world. But when we take superstition and we bring that to the level of worshiping God, you know, we have to be real careful. You get a chain letter. It says, break this chain letter and you're going to have financial distress. I guess I better do that just in case. What are you doing? You're taking concepts, oh, there's an evil spirit world out there and it might do that to me. You're giving them power that belongs to God. Astrology. Anytime we start to look at anything other than God as controlling us, as other powers as controlling us, and we start looking to those powers, we're breaking the first commandment. That's what makes it so important that we be careful about what our kids get involved in. You know what may seem not very harmful at one point, can become very harmful at another point.

For most people who got very interested in Harry Potter, when it was real big, I know there's a new Harry Potter movie that came out that's not quite as big as it used to be. You know, when Harry Potter first came out, people were all interested in that and the kids all liked it. 90% of all kids got no bad harm from it, but you know what? What's fascinating is, during the time when Harry Potter was very popular, the amount of people participating, and the only reason we know this is because of the websites, the amount of people participating on real witchcraft websites exploded, and most of them were kids.

So, did Harry Potter hurt most people? No. Did it open the door for others? Yes. You see how we have to be careful? We have to be real careful here on how we handle certain things. What we allow, what we don't allow, how we discuss what we allow. This is very important. But the fourth point, this is the one where you and I can disobey this commandment very easily. When God gave the Ten Commandments to ancient Israel, he was very hard to ignore. No Israelite fell asleep. A mountain's on fire. There's noise. This voice is saying the Ten Commandments, they're covering their ears. The ground's shaking like they're in an earthquake.

People are just frightened. People are dropping on their knees. You couldn't ignore God. You could do lots of things at that moment, but ignore God was not possible.

One of the ways that we break this command is we get so busy with life. We get so used to living our Christianity. Oh, we come to church every week. But in our real day-to-day lives, we're ignoring God. There's a great example of this in the Scripture.

In 2 Chronicles, we have the story of Asa, one of the kings of Judah. And it says in 2 Chronicles 14 that Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God. I always find it interesting. It doesn't say the Lord the God, the Lord his God. There's something personal between Asa and God. Asa was, and we'll see in a minute, at least in a very limited way, keeping the First Commandment. It was the Lord his God. He believed in him. He had faith in him. He tried to do what he was supposed to do. Now, he had very incomplete information, but he tried to do what he was supposed to do. And so he did good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God. And this went on for 10 years. And then Asa was faced with a very serious problem. Let's go to 2 Chronicles 14. 2 Chronicles 14.

There have been some people say that the sheer sizes of the armies of the Old Testament can't be true. People forget.

You were in the army back then if you were young enough to carry a sword and old enough to carry a sword and everyone in between. So basically, the whole male population between certain ages, unless you were headed in infirmity, were part of the army. So the armies could be very large for the size of the population. It says that Asa had 300,000 soldiers in Judah. He had a big army. And he went 10 years where he did what was right before God and God blessed them. And it was a wealthy nation and Judah did well and everything was good. And then an Ethiopian army shows up of a million men with lots of chariots. This must be all of North Africa. They show up! Now here is Asa's response. Let's go to verse 11.

And Asa cried out to the Lord his God, and said, Lord, it is nothing for you to help, whether with many or with those who have no power. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rest on you, and in your name we go against this multitude. O Lord, you are our God. Do not let men prevail against you. What a remarkable prayer. He put his 300,000 men together. He knows he can't win. He's got a huge army, but he can't win. And he goes to God and he says, you are my God, and you are our God. We're your people. We try to obey you. We want to follow you. Therefore, we know how we got here, and we trust that you will take care of us. And the next verse says, God destroyed the Ethiopian army.

Asa understands at this point the first commandment. He understands it. Now let's go to 2 Chronicles 16. Time goes by. So this is about 10 years after he becomes king. Now notice in chapter 16, verse 1, in the 36th year of the reign of Asa. Oh, so this would be 26 years after what we just read. Now 26 years goes by. Now think about that. That's a long time. He was king for 10 years. Oh, by the way, the rest of chapter 15, he realizes now, after God restores the Ethiopian army, just how incomplete his worship is. So he goes through the entire nation of Judah and has to tear down all the idols. And everybody has to worship the God of Judah, the God of Israel. So now he changes the entire religious system of everybody. He does away with religious freedom. Judah had religious freedom. Asa said, no, we don't anymore. There's no more religious freedom. Everybody worships this God, the God, the God who said to our fathers, I am the God who brought you out of the bondage. There are no other gods before. And so now they are keeping the first commandment.

26 years go by. He's real competent. I mean, he's now grown up and become a king. He's in his middle ages. He's a good king. He's cleaned up the religion. The economy is good. Crime's down.

I mean, it's good to be a Jew at this time.

Because they're worshiping God, things are great. And he's become very good at being king. He's a good king. He's competent. He knows what he's doing. He has confidence in what he does. In the 36th year of the reign of Asa, Belshia, king of Israel, came up against Judah and built Rehma, that he might let Nana go out or come in to Asa, king of Judah. So now we have the king of Israel come along, and he's basically building a fortress city so that trade can't go between what's north of Israel or south of Judah. He's bottling up all the trade routes. So you can't get into Judah from the north. So he's basically carrying out economic warfare. So now he's faced with a problem. His cousins over there have declared economic war against him. So what's Asa going to do? Verse 2, Then Asa brought silver and gold from the treasures of the house of the Lord, then the king's house, and sent to Ben-Hedad, king of Syria, who dwelled in Damascus, saying, Let there be a treaty between you and me, as there was between my father and your father. See, I have sent you silver and gold. Come, break your treaty with Belshia, king of Israel, so that he will withdraw from me. Brilliant move. Absolutely brilliant move. He takes some of his wealth. He takes some of the wealth of the temple. Remember Solomon's temple is still standing at the sun. And he sends it to the king of Syria, who is north of Israel, and says, Look, I know you have a treaty with Israel, but you and I should make a treaty. We get that sandwiched between us. If you attack the northern outpost of Israel, then they'll withdraw, and my trade routes will be open again. And that's exactly what happened. The Syrians attacked the northern edges of Israel. The Israelis, the Israelites, had to pull back their army from the Judean border, and it says the Jews went in and burnt down the fortress city. And the trade routes were open again. And now Israel couldn't do anything about it, because if they picked on Judah, they had to fight Syria too.

Asa had become such a great king. He could play politics with the best of them.

You notice, though, there's a little different approach here than when the Ethiopians had showed up 26 years before. What did he do 26 years before? He went to God.

You are my God. You are our God. What should we do?

He's got it all figured out, don't know. God sends him a prophet. We'll pick up in the middle of what the prophet says. Look at verse 8.

We're the Ethiopians and the Lubim, not a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen, yet because you relied on the Lord, he delivered them into your hands.

For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to him.

He believed in God. He went to the temple probably every Sabbath. He had done away with all the idols. What more could he do?

The first commandment is about loyalty, our loyalty to God. Asa understood that and went to God and said, you can take care of me even though I am small because you are my God. 26 years later, he didn't even go to God. He didn't need God to do that for him. Oh, come on, I'm going to take that to God. I can take care of that myself. I'm just making agreement with Ben-Adad and we'll just put Israel on a vice here. But what if that wasn't God's will? What if God had a different plan? What if God said, oh, look, I'm going to strike Israel with a plague. Or I'm just going to send a prophet to the king of Israel. We'll get this changed. What if God had a different answer? But he never went to God. And notice, this has to deal with loyalty. God said, I am the one who brought you here. I am the one who made you king. Just like he says this all the time. He is the one who brought us here. You didn't convert yourself. I didn't convert myself. I didn't learn the Bible myself. God did this. God brought us here.

And Asa forgot that. And God said, that's disloyalty.

Just see the danger you and I have. We run through life so fast. We run through life so fast. Oh, we show up to church every 7th. But are we being disloyal to God and how we live every day? Because we're not going to God and saying, I remember how I got here. What is it you want? You are my God. I am the Lord your God. Notice what happens to Asa in the last part of verse 9.

The rest of Asa's reign was God's. Did you know why you haven't had wars, Asa? You know why you get all this time and peace? You thought you were doing it. That's it. I was doing it. But you can do it yourself now, right? You're a big boy. Let's see how long it takes Ben Heydad to break that treaty with you. Let's find how long it takes for Israel to start raiding your borders again. Or how about Egypt to the south? That's even a little more scarier, isn't it? Or how about those people way up north there? The ones in Jess are so cruel. You know, the Assyrians or the Babylonians. What about them?

Well, you'll be taking care of yourself now.

So Asa had to take care of himself the rest of the time.

How he died is very interesting. Verse 12. In the 39th year of his reign, something must have happened to Asa because this isn't the man who went to God when faced with the billion-man army from Ethiopia. The 39th year of his reign, Asa became diseased in his feet. And his malady was severe, yet in his disease he did not seek the Lord but the physicians. Now this doesn't mean physicians are bad. Oh, well, we should never go to a doctor. Now the point here is, he did not seek the Lord.

He no longer sought God. He no longer saw, you are the Lord by God. I am sick, I will come to you first. I am sick, I will come and seek an answer. The physicians aren't the evil part here. Luke was a physician. The problem here is Asa didn't seek him anymore. Now that doesn't mean Asa didn't believe in him. And I imagine Asa continued to worship God. It doesn't say that idolatry came back or, you know, it doesn't say that. Although it does say that he started to oppress some of his people. He became an angry man. Once he no longer was keeping that first commandment, he became an angry man, because now he had to fix all his problems himself. So he began to oppress some of his own people in Judah. You mean the next verse, or he died? Three years later, he died. What was God's will concerning his disease? I don't know. Asa doesn't know. Nobody knows except God. Maybe God was going to let him die anyways. Maybe God was going to let him reign another 10 years. See, the problem is we don't know because he never went nast.

He no longer needed to go to God. He had it all figured out. He had it all figured out.

And according to what we read just a little bit earlier, God says, you know your problem? You're disloyal.

You're disloyal. This is the great way that you and I can break this commandment and not even know it. Oh, we're living this way. We know the truth. We pray that day by day we make our decisions, not based on God's way, or not based by seeking God's counsel, not through prayer, but we're just, we're competent. We can do it. We know what we're doing. We just sort of go through life, making all of our own decisions.

And we've forgotten how we got here.

We've forgotten the God that stood on that mountain with thunder and lightning and fire and earthquake and yelled out to these people that they grabbed their ears and said to Moses, don't let him talk to us anymore. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me. We forget that. As we forget that, we begin to ignore him.

And when we ignore God, we end up on our own. What we're doing on our own, and that's no place to be.

Jesus thought that we not only have to live by the letter of the law, but the Spirit.

Like I said, this is a whole lot more than do's and don'ts, is it? We've gone through two little sentences in the Ten Commandments. Two little sentences. What we're really supposed to learn from this is the mind of God. Why were the commandments given? What are the principles behind each commandment? So that's what we'll be doing over the next few months. See, we're not going to get one sermon on the Ten Commandments. We're going to get ten sermons on the Ten Commandments. Because we have to take apart each one of them and look at what it actually teaches for us under the New Covenant. So next time, we will take and we will discuss the second of the Ten Commandments. If you don't remember what it is, be sure and read it between now and next week.