Word of Salvation – May 2010

 

BE A FALSE GOD BUSTER, John de Hoog

(Sermon 2 in a series on the Ten Commandments)

 

Text – Exodus 20:3

Reading – Psalm 115

Singing – BOW 115, 146, 436, “Exalt the Lord our God”, “No foreign gods”

 

In the First Commandment, God says, “You shall have no other gods before me.”

 

Is this a command for Christians?

 

I understand that the Second Commandment is for me – don’t make idols or bow down to them. The Third Commandment is for me – don’t use God’s name in vain. The Sixth Commandment is for me – no murder. The Eighth Commandment is for me – no stealing. But is the First Commandment relevant for Christians?

 

I can see how it was relevant for the ancient Israelites to whom this Commandment was first given. The nations around about all had multiple gods, only Israel said that God is One. Israel was the odd man out, or the odd nation out, and it’s hard to be the only one with a certain opinion. The Israelites were constantly tempted to adopt the ways of their neighbours; the worship and service of other gods. So God has to tell them not to.

 

But we Christians are people who’ve given up all other gods and turned to the One True God, aren’t we? Maybe we don’t really need the First Commandment. Maybe we can get by on nine Commandments?

 

Pause

 

What we need to see today is that the First Commandment is actually the basic commandment, and without it we can’t even begin to be Christian!

 

I’d like us to see this today under three headings: 1.Understand the false gods we serve. 2 See what they do to us. 3. Be a false god buster.

 

First, let’s understand the false gods we serve.

 

We need to think about what gods really are. In Israel’s ancient world, life was very clearly dependent on nature. A drought or a flood was devastating. All the peoples of their day developed a worship of the forces of creation on which they were so dependent.

 

Israel is just seven weeks out of Egypt here at Mt Sinai. In Egypt the annual flooding of the Nile was central to their agriculture, and the annual flooding was given by the god Hapi. Each year Egypt had a frog season, the god Hekht was responsible for controlling the frogs. Other gods governed the health of cattle, gave grain crops and figs and grapes. Pharaoh himself was thought to be the son of Amen-Ra, who was the god of the sun. These gods of Egypt were worshipped to make sure that they gave life and security to Egypt. But when God turned the Nile into blood, it was pretty clear that Hapi was powerless. And when frogs overran the land, it was obvious that Hekht had lost control. And when total darkness covered the land for three days, God had obviously defeated Amen-Ra. So God demonstrated that the gods of Egypt were nothing.

 

We in Australia have a steady food supply. We don’t need to appease various gods to make sure we survive.

 

But the definition of a god has not changed. A god is a thing that gives us life and security and significance. To identify a god in your life, ask: “What thing or person controls me by giving me a sense of worth and identity?”

 

God says in the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me”. “You shall have no other gods in your heart where I should be.” God is saying to us: Recognise that you are constantly tempted to serve other gods, and stop doing it!

 

To open this up, let me tell you about a false god that I struggle with. This false god is called: “That the church I work in succeeds.”

 

Let me tell you about this false god. I find it very difficult to live entirely by God’s grace in justifying what I do and who I am. I’m the pastor of this church. I’m the only person in the church whose life and work are wrapped up in this church. Everyone else in the church has other things they can succeed at or get meaning and validation from.

 

Some of you are in the paid workforce or in business for yourselves. You can succeed at work, get social contact at work, you can be promoted or get other forms of validation in the workplace. You can get a sense of achievement out of fixing someone’s plumbing or wiring a house just right or finishing a task on time.

 

Others of you are students who are involved in the social system of a university or the College or a school. You get your validation, your sense of doing something worthwhile, from your place of education. You get marks and reviews and praise and you have a sense of preparing for something else.

 

Others of you are mothers at home, or people who have retired from work, or people who are between jobs, and so on.

 

But none of you has your life wrapped up in whether this church succeeds or not. If it succeeds, fine, we’ll continue to put in or attend or just belong. If it fails, fine, we’ll attend or put in somewhere else. But for me that’s so difficult. If the evening attendance drops off, I take it on myself – It’s my fault. I often feel lonely because there’s no one else, really, who cares if the church succeeds or fails.

 

Pause

 

What I’m doing here is describing a false god. Can you see what an insidious and dangerous false god this is? It includes so many falsehoods.

 

For a start, it’s not my church, it’s God’s church! The Holy Spirit is at work within it, he gives growth or not, and who am I to take such things on myself?

 

Second, it is ridiculous for me to feel these things personally, as if I am somehow a target for other people’s commitments. It displays a terrible sense of pride in me for me to take these things personally.

 

I’m telling you this to open up an example of a false god. The great trap that I am in danger of falling into is that I need Jesus Christ but I also need the church to succeed. If the church doesn’t succeed, I feel it very deeply; it feels like a blot on my record. It feels like a blot on my righteousness, on my justification.

 

Do you see the danger I’m in. It’s nice to have Jesus in my life, but what I really want is for the church to succeed! The great danger I am in is changing gods. I serve God and I give my life so that the church might succeed. So what do I want the most, God, or for the church to succeed? The great danger is that I am serving God only to get what I really want, which is for the church to succeed. And so I have a new god, and the one true God is only a means to an end. That’s idolatry.

 

Here is a false god I struggle with. I need to unmask it, to bust open this false god and call it what it is.

 

What kind of false gods do you struggle with? What could you not do without?

 

In Australia, we are super-rich compared to three-quarters of the world’s population. Let’s decide to make our homes more like the homes of the poorest 25% of the world’s population. What would happen? Here is the way Robert Hielbroner sees it:

 

We begin by invading the house to strip it of its furniture. Everything goes: beds, chairs, tables, television set, lamps. We will leave the family with a few old blankets, a kitchen table and one wooden chair. Along with the wardrobes go all the clothes. Each member of the family may keep his oldest trousers or dress, and a shirt or a blouse. We will allow a pair of shoes for the head of the family, but none for the wife or children.

 

We move to the kitchen. The appliances have already been taken out, so we move to the cupboards. The box of matches may stay, a small bag of flour, some sugar and salt. A few mouldy potatoes, already in the garbage can, must be hastily rescued, for they will provide much of tonight’s meal. We will leave a handful of onions and a dish of dried beans. All the rest we take away: the meat, the fresh vegetables, the canned goods, the crackers, the sweets.

 

Now we have stripped the house: the bathroom has been dismantled; the running water shut off, the electric wires taken out. Next we take away the house. The family can move to the garden shed.

 

Communication must go next. No more newspapers, magazines, books – not that they are missed, since we must take away the family’s literacy as well…

 

Now government services must go. No more postman, no more firemen. There is a school, but it is five kilometres away and consists of two classrooms. There are, of course, no hospitals or doctors nearby. The nearest clinic is 15 kilometres away and is attended by a midwife. It can be reached by bicycle, provided the family has a bicycle, which is unlikely…¹

 

Maybe you would be quite happy without all these things. But are there other things apart from God that you could not survive without? Your friends? Your family? Your career? What people think of you?

 

How do we identify our false gods – the things that give us life, security and significance apart from God? Look at what your heart needs and most wants. What do you do with your solitude? When you don’t have to think of anything else, what do you think of? What do you daydream about? Where is it easiest to spend your money? What is non-negotiable for you? A woman working as a super-model said once, “If I don’t have my looks I have nothing.” There is a song which says, “You’re nobody until someone loves you.” That’s an idol construct. How do you feel about your work – what would happen if you lost your job, or could not succeed at work?

 

It’s hard to know what your real gods are until they start dying. It’s hard to know what your real gods are on a sunny day when everything is great, when your church is going well, when your money is safe in a good investment, when your health is good, when you have some tremendous prospects ahead for you. It’s hard to tell what your real gods are until they begin to fail you and you begin to suffer, until your baby dies, until you get cancer, until you come to an end of yourself and have nothing left to fall back on but God himself.

 

But now, see what our false gods do to us! Here is our second point: See what they do to us. They do three things to us. They take away our freedom, they leave us utterly unsatisfied and they deform our characters.

 

First, they take away our freedom. Our false gods put us into prison. Do any of the following prisons sound familiar?

 

1. The prison of needing approval. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:2-3 “Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. I care very little if I am judged by you.” Can you say that? The prison of needing approval is the need to always please as many people as possible. If you’re in this prison you base your identity on what people think rather than on what God has said about you.

2. The prison of obligation. Do you feel the need to fix and rescue? When something goes wrong do you feel this strong need to get involved, to interfere, to fix the problem, rather than leave it to God?

3. The prison of rules. You are in this prison if you believe that the world and the church should run according to rules, and if only we could live by all the rules life would be fine.

4. The prison of perfectionism. I heard of one student for the ministry who could never get anything finished. He was brilliant and committed to serving God, but he could never finish an assignment or a sermon or anything, because he could never get it to that level of perfection that was acceptable. Needless to say he didn’t finish.

 

These prisons and all the others we could think of are a result of giving too much importance to false gods. The god of what other people think, or the god of rules, or the god of being perfect, and so on. The first thing that false gods do is they take away our freedom and put us into prisons.

 

The second thing false gods do is they leave us utterly unsatisfied. If our god is accumulation of earthly toys, they never satisfy; we always need more. If our god is the approval of others, then the first hint of disapproval will destroy us. If our god is money or a successful business, we will never have enough money, we will never be successful enough. Your false gods don’t satisfy you. Instead they begin to shape you and to deform you.

 

Here is the third thing false gods do to us – they deform our character. If you choose money as your god, do not be surprised to find yourself becoming a greedy miser. It you choose technology and computers as your god, do not be surprised to find yourself becoming deformed into something like a machine. If you choose leisure and pleasure as your god, do not be surprised to find yourself becoming lazy and self-indulgent. You will be transformed into the image of the god you serve.

 

Psalm 115:4-8 describes the false gods of the nations, and it says, “Their idols are silver and gold, made by the hands of men. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but they cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but they cannot smell; they have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but they cannot walk; nor can they utter a sound with their throats. Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.”

 

Your false gods will trap you and take away your freedom. They will never satisfy you, and they will deform your character.

 

If only we could find a God who would give us freedom, a God who would deeply satisfy the hunger of our souls, a God who would not deform us but transform our character into the likeness of a perfect human being! If only there was such a God to whom we could look for life and security and significance. Is there such a God?

 

Pause

 

Let me review what we’ve seen. 1.Understand the false gods we serve. False gods are whatever we rely on for life, security and significance apart from the One True God. Ask yourself: Does this person or thing control me by providing me with my sense of worth and identity? 2. See what they do to us. They imprison us, they fail to satisfy us and they deform our character. Now: 3. Be a false god buster. Not a ghost buster, be a false god buster.

 

There are two things you can do to crack open the prisons that false gods put you into. The first is to apply the grace of God in Jesus Christ to yourself. And the second is to add an “o” to your false gods.

 

The first thing to do is to apply the grace of God in Jesus Christ to yourself. Let’s try it. You’re in the prison of needing approval; you live and die by what people think of you. Now apply the grace of God in Jesus to yourself.

 

Why do I have value as a person? Because other people approve of me, or because God has made me his child? I want other people to love me because I’m so diligent or so beautiful or so generous; but if people found out what I’m really like I’d die!

 

But God knows what I’m really like, and still he loves me. Galatians 2:20 “The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 3:26 “We are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ…Because we are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘ Abba , Father’.” 2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

 

God says to us, “You shall have no other gods before me.” But these words have a wonderful flipside. A command not to rely on other gods is an invitation to trust in the One True God and to place all our life and security and significance in his hands. If I am in the prison of needing the approval of others, if I am worshipping the false god of human applause, I can break out of that prison by unmasking that false god. “Human applause, I don’t need you. You are a false god, you have imprisoned me for years and you are misshaping me. But no more! I am in the hands of the One True God; I trust in Jesus Christ, and your power over me is gone!”

 

Jesus will not deform my character; indeed, as I live for him I will be transformed into his likeness, into the image of a perfect man. You become like whatever or whoever is your god, and the same applies to Jesus Christ. God is making you like him. This is not a prison but perfect freedom. Galatians 5:1 “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Stand firm then, and do not let a false god put you back into prison.

 

The first thing you can do to free yourself from the prison of a false god is to apply the grace of God in Christ to yourself. If God loves me in Jesus Christ, then what can anyone or anything do to me!

 

The second practical thing you can do is you can add an “o” to your false gods.

 

[Use a large diagram to show how you add an “o”, so that “gods” become “goods”.]

 

All the good things in your life are gifts from God, and if we treat them as gifts of his grace and thank him for them, then it’s much harder for them to become gods. They are not “gods”, rather, they are “goods;” good things from God.

 

Career success, money, material possessions, your appearance, these are all “goods”; they are all good gifts from God that we can thank him for and enjoy. Just be sure that you are not getting caught in making such “goods” from God into ultimate things that you begin to rely on for your life, security and significance.

 

Learn to consciously rely on God for your sense of worth and identity.

 

Every day, as you get up, tell yourself, “Today I stand before God with hands empty of self-generated worth, but I belong to God, I am his through Jesus Christ.”

 

Here is the way to begin to obey God when he says, “You shall have no other gods before me.”

 

Amen