Looking Out for Number One
INTRODUCTION
Once upon a time a little boy who built a little toy sailboat. He would take it to the park every day and sail the little boat on the pond.
He liked watching it coast around in the breeze.
Because he loved his boat, he was pretty careful not to let it go too far out in the pond where he couldn’t get it back.
But one day, the inevitable day came when the boat sailed beyond where he could reach it. He’d gotten himself soaked trying, but the boat had gone out too far for the boy to rescue it.
He went home heartsick, expecting he would never see the boat again.
But a few weeks later, he was walking through town when he saw his boat in the window at the little secondhand shop.
He was so excited!
He went into the store and said, “You’ve found my boat! I made that boat! It’s mine and I’d like to have it back.”
But the man behind the counter said, “Well, maybe it was your boat once, but it’s my boat now – and if you want it, you’ll have to pay me 20 dollars for it.
“TWENTY DOLLARS?!?!?!” the boy said. It seemed like an enormous amount of money. He had no idea how he could come up with that much cash.
He started to hang his head and walk out of the store, but the man said, “If you’d like to earn a little money, I COULD use some help around here.”
And so it was agreed. Every week the boy would come and sweep floors and tidy up the shelves, and the man would give him a few dollars.
Finally the day came when he brought his pocket full of crumpled bills to the store and bought his boat back. He was thrilled.
As he walked out of the store, holding his boat like a long-lost friend, he said, “You’re mine twice now! You were mine the first time because I made you; and now you’re mine again because I bought you.”
There was no longer any question but that the boat belonged to the boy.
Before giving the Ten Commandments, God says this:
"I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, where you were slaves.”
He is reminding them that not only did he create them, but he redeemed them.
He gave them life, and he gave them freedom.
That’s the relationship that God had with Israel and it is the relationship he has with us.
We are his because he created us.
And we are His because he bought us out of slavery to sin.
He created us and He redeemed us.
And that relationship is the basis for the commands that God gave to Israel.
God LED the people of Israel out of Egypt.
He LED them through the desert
And the commandments are another way that God LEADS his people, by giving them words to live by.
THE FIRST, AND THE FOUNDATIONAL, COMMANDMENT IS:
“You shall have no other gods before me.”
Or as the Good News has it: "Worship no god but me.”
The words demanded that God’s people worship, and love, and serve only the one, true God.
With this first commandment, God makes it clear that His people are to have an exclusive relationship with Him.
Even though most translations read, “You shall have no other gods before me” that doesn’t mean, “You can worship all the gods you want, I just want to be your favorite.”
He is saying, “Worship ONLY me. I am to be your ONLY God.”
These words remind us that God sees our relationship with Him much like a marriage relationship.
It’s not enough to stand at the altar and say, “You’ll be my FAVORITE girlfriend!”
The words are “FORSAKING ALL OTHERS…”
And if either spouse does NOT forsake all others, it usually spells destruction for the marriage.
It is probably all but impossible for us to imagine how that must have sounded to the people of Israel.
We’re used to thinking in terms of there being only one God.
All three major religions of the world: Christianity, Judaism and Islam, are committed to what is called “monotheism,” or the worship of only one God.
But at this time, Christianity and Islam were thousands of years in the future, and the Jewish faith is in its infancy here in the book of Exodus.There was NO SUCH thing as “monotheism.” NOBODY HAD JUST ONE GOD.
ALL of Israel’s neighbors were Pagans – that is, they worshipped lots of different gods.
People believed that certain gods ruled certain geographic areas or natural phenomenon.
There were “national gods”
The Philistines had Dagon
The Moabites’ had Chemosh
The Ammonites’ had Molech.
But they didn’t just worship their national god.
They also had fertility gods storm gods, sun gods, sea gods
There were all kinds of gods
And they all had to be kept happy
And while a person or nation may have a “favorite” god, they certainly wouldn’t think of narrowing their worship to just one.
If the god or gods of another nation seemed to have power, then you could add that god to your collection.
You see the Philistines try to do this in 1 Samuel 5, after they capture the Ark of God from Israel.
After the Philistines had captured the ark of God, they took it from Ebenezer to Ashdod.
Then they carried the ark into Dagon’s temple and set it beside Dagon. When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the LORD! They took Dagon and put him back in his place.
But the following morning when they rose, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the LORD! His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold; only his body remained.
Eventually, the Philistines decided they would be better off if they sent the Ark back to Israel, but I think that little story illustrates this first commandment: “Worship no god but ME.”
WHILE WE PROBABLY DON’T KNOW ANYBODY WHO HAS AN IDOL SHRINE IN THEIR HOME (ALTHOUGH SUCH THINGS STILL EXIST), WE LIVE IN A NATION THAT PRIDES ITSELF ON ITS TOLERANCE OF MANY OPINIONS, MANY PEOPLE, AND MANY RELIGIONS.
We may be more sophisticated about it, but it is still easier for us to understand a culture that picks and chooses different gods or different aspects of other religions – to live by.
See what you think of this statement, made by M. Cherif Bassiouni has been a law professor at DePaul University College of Law for over 30 years. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on international criminal law and human rights. In 1999, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in establishing the International Criminal Court.
At a January 4, 2000 interfaith dialogue near Chicago, Bassiouni he said this:
All religions lead to God using different paths… judgment is not by the choice we make, but by how we pursue the path of the choice we make. Different religions and cultures are equal in the eyes of God and should be seen as equal in the eyes of man," he said.
Whether you agree or disagree, millions of Americans – regardless of their own religious beliefs – would heartily agree. And it is such a reasonable statement!We want to agree with it! We don’t want to be associated with hateful, arrogant, self-righteous people who say, “My way is the only way!”
But we’ve got a problem.
And the problem is the first commandment.
"You shall have no other gods before me.”
Which is to say, the Lord is the only true God.
Or, to put it in negative terms, “All religions do NOT lead to God using different paths.”
There is only one God.
His name is not Allah – or Zeus or Hermes or any other name that might be used.
That one God demands to be worshipped exclusively.
And that grates against our democratic sensibilities.
“But everybody is equal” we cry!
And yes, in the eyes of the law, everybody is equal.
But not everybody is right when it comes to who God is.
In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Steven Van Zandt, guitarist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band said, "I am a reformed Taoist, part-time Buddhist, Hindu, animist, pagan, Jewish mystic, and Christian. I always got along great with priests and rabbis and mullahs and gurus, even though I spend most of my life constructively criticizing them."
That’s sort of the American ideal of religion:
You can HAVE it all; you can BELIEVE it all.
Sarah Michelle Gellar, star of the TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," said this "I consider myself a spiritual person. I believe in an idea of God, although it’s my own personal ideal. I find most religions interesting, and I’ve been to every kind of denomination: Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist. I’ve taken bits from everything and customized it."
Geller and Van Zandt don’t worship God – they worship what I call “Franken-God” – Not the God who IS, but a god they’ve invented from pieces of other gods.
The first commandment does not allow for that kind of spirituality. But if you say that publicly, the people in our culture scream, “Who are you to say that YOUR way is the ONLY way?” That is so ARROGANT!
And we think, “Well, I don’t want to be arrogant.”
“Christians are supposed to be humble, not arrogant.”
And “There are really some very nice people who are not Christians.”
And those things are true!
There ARE very nice people who are not Christians.
And there are some NOT very nice people who ARE Christians.
But that has NOTHING to do with whether or not there is only one God or you can worship whoever you want.
But it was Jesus who said, “I am THE way, THE truth, THE life. NO ONE comes to the Father except by me.”
I didn’t make it up.
It’s the God who reveals Himself in the Bible who says, “You shall have no other gods besides me.”
BUT TOO OFTEN WHEN PEOPLE HEAR THAT, THEY THINK, WELL, I ONLY BELIEVE IN ONE GOD.
“And since I believe in God, I must be ‘OK.’”
Even if the god they believe in is sort of a Franken-God whom they’ve created out of bits and pieces of things they’ve heard.
Like Sarah Michelle Gellar, they’ve looked at different religions and chosen a bit of this and a bit of that.
“My god has the head of Buddha, and the heart of Jesus, and the hands of Gandhi…”
People will say, “Well, I don’t believe in a god who would send someone to hell…” Or I don’t believe in a god who would say homosexual behavior is wrong. Or I don’t believe in this kind of a god or that kind of a god. And it makes me wonder if they are talking about God, or about an invisible friend.
Now, invisible friends are great, because they always do and say just what you want them to do and say. If you want them to have red hair and green eyes, they do!
If you want them to have brown hair and eyes, they do!
In fact, they can have green eyes one day and brown eyes the next. There’s only one LITTLE problem with invisible friends. They don’t exist! They’re not real. They are figments of our imagination. You can’t define REAL friends like that. If they have green eyes today, they’re going to have green eyes tomorrow. We don’t determine how they look or what they say or even whether they will still be our friends tomorrow. And if you’re 4 years old and you’re convinced you have an invisible friend, that’s ok! But if you’re 40 years old and you’re still convinced you have an invisible friend, you’re probably psychotic.
Arrogance is not saying, "I believe that God is who He said He is." And I believe that if He says He is the only true God, then He really IS the only true God.
Arrogance is saying, “God is whatever I say He is.”
Arrogance is not saying, “I believe Jesus when He said He was the ONLY way to God.” Arrogance is saying, “I don’t like the idea of Jesus as the only way, so I’ve decided that ‘all roads lead to God.’” “I’ve decided that as long as people are sincere in what they believe, they’ll go to heaven.” That’s saying, “I know more about God than Jesus ever did”
The idea that “No matter what we believe, as long as we’re sincere, we’ll be ok,” may sound really good.
But think about it in any other context. Let’s say I have a bottle of arsenic in my medicine cabinet. And you come over and you’ve got this terrible headache and you say, “Hey, do you have any aspirin?”
So I open up the old medicine cabinet and say, “Rats! I’m all out of aspirin. But hey, these arsenic pills LOOK like aspirin! As long as I SAY it’s aspirin, and you BELIEVE it’s aspirin, it’ll be fine. After all, what’s important is the FAITH, right?”
What’s important is NOT the faith.
What’s important is the OBJECT of one’s faith.
The arsenic is going to affect you like arsenic regardless of what you think those little pills are.
The God who created the Universe with the power of His Word is the one who has the right to tell US who HE is.
All roads do NOT lead to heaven.
All religions do NOT teach the same things.
We don’t all worship the same God.
And all gods are not the one true God of the Scriptures.
And much of the problem in our nation is that Christians who claim to believe in the God of the Scriptures don’t know the Scriptures well enough to have an accurate view of God.
All too often, Christians have constructed their own “Franken-gods” from Bible stories, Oprah, and things they heard from their mothers or some preacher.
And we can’t WORSHIP the God of the Bible if we don’t KNOW the God of the Bible.
CONCLUSION
In the book of Acts, Paul sees the altars to the many gods in the city of Athens – there is even an altar “TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.”
He challenges them that the God they do not know is in fact the one true God.
He says this:
…we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone-- an image made by man’s design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.
There is only one God – the God who is revealed in the Scriptures. And we are commanded to serve Him only.
