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[Music] The Cardinal Commandment [Music] A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman

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[Music] The scripture reading of the evening is from Exodus chapter 20 beginning the reading at the verse numbered one

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the passage of scripture to which we generally refer as the Ten Commandments. And God spoke all these words, saying, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,

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out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make yourself a graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above

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or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

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Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work.

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Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you. You shall not kill.

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You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house.

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You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his manservant or his maidservant or his ox or his ass or anything that is your neighbor's.

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Now when all the people perceived the thunderings and the lightnings and the sound of the trumpet and the mountains smoking, the people were afraid and trembled,

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and they stood afar off and said to Moses, "You speak to us and we will hear, but let not God speak to us lest we die." And Moses said to the people, "Do not fear,

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for God has come to prove you, and that the fear of him may be before your eyes, that you may not sin." And may the same God who inspired these words

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incline our hearts to the understanding of this inspiration. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

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Amen. The importance of the Ten Commandments in the body of Scripture is perhaps best illustrated by this.

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No single story in Scripture is described in as many chapters and verses as the story of the giving of the Ten Commandments. They are very old in the history of Israel.

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Many men have come and gone since the commandments came and stayed, and many are those who have broken themselves in trying to break the commandments.

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We have them in our Bible in what is probably very close to the original form. Long before the Bible was written, it was the custom to remember laws

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by ticking them off on the fingers of the hand. That is the reason there are Ten Commandments. But the form of the commandments from that day is probably almost exactly the form

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we have the commandments in today. Most classics get caught in the mud of their own time, but the Ten Commandments have about them a grace and a truth which makes them appropriate

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in any time. They move from age to age, eternally relevant. The Ten Specifications of Moses have a way of shaming us and stirring us down deep

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so that we come to understand very quickly that they are not given as multiple-choice questions. There's a crispness about the Ten Commandments which speaks of their source and also of our need.

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Tonight I ask you to think with me of the cardinal commandment. I mean by that of the first commandment, that one which is given priority in the list.

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"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." A number of times across the last years, college students have been asked to list the Ten Commandments in what they considered to be the order of precedence.

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And in each and every instance where this was done, the students have listed the ethical and moral injunctions which come at the end of the list of the Ten, as we have it in the Bible.

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They have listed them first. These students, I think, have forgotten that Jesus himself was once asked, "Which is the first commandment?"

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and replied by echoing the words of his father God. Jesus said, "The first commandment is to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."

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That is the message of the first commandment. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." This is the most foundational and fundamental of all the commandments.

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If one is unwilling to make the commitment that the first commandment requires, then none of the other commandments will have influence or strength in one's life.

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But if, on the other hand, one is ready to accept the first commandment and to build a life upon it, then the other nine commandments

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become magnificent norms by which that life is built. I ask you then to think with me tonight of this commandment which is so crucial,

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the cardinal commandment. And I would ask you to notice, first of all, that there is an interpretive problem related to this commandment.

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In its literal Hebrew form, the commandment reads, "Thou shalt bring no other gods before my face." As I'm sure you are aware,

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there are many times in both the Old and New Testaments when the relationship between God and his people is described in terms of a marriage-- God as the groom and the people of God,

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the bride, prepared for the holy husband. What is being said in this commandment is that the bride is to have eyes only for her husband, that there are to be no third parties,

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that never under any other circumstances is any other individual to be brought into the relationship which exists between God the groom and God's people, the bride.

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No other gods are to be brought before God's face. Now notice this commandment does not say that there are no other gods. Throughout all of the Old Testament,

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we find a struggle going on between God and his people with regard to the tendency of his people to begin to worship false gods. From the very earliest pages of the Old Testament

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to the very last pages of the Old Testament, this problem of the worshipping of other gods is before us as we study the Old Testament. For example, in the book of Genesis,

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the very first chapter, the listing of the days and the things that were created upon those days is not intended to be a list of scientific dimensions.

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It is not intended to be a list of historical or chronological information. It is related principally to the subordination of other gods. You see, on each of the days,

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a different kind of god is enumerated, and it is suggested that that god, having been created by the one great god, is subordinate.

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The creature, of course, is always subordinate to the creator. On the first day, we're told that the gods of light and darkness

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are subordinate to the god. On the second day, we are told that the gods of the sky and the sea are second-class deities.

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On the third day, we are told that gods of the earth and vegetation, the fertility gods, in no way, shape, or form

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equal the god above all gods. On the fourth day, we're told that all astronomical deities, suns, moons, stars,

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these things are not to be praised above God. On the fifth day, we are told no animals are to be exalted above God. And on the sixth day, we are told

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that no men, no pharaoh, no king, no pretender to deity can stand above God. And the list of the days is climaxed

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with these words, "These are the generations of the heaven and the earth that were created."

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And that word "generations" refers to a custom which was very common in Egypt and Assyria and Babylonia at that time.

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All the gods had family trees. Their generations, or pedigrees, were recited as part of their worship. And what is being said,

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right here in the opening pages of Genesis, is that all of these gods, their generations, their pedigrees,

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their colorful pantheon, all of it is subordinate to the God who is the maker and sustainer of everything that is.

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This is the way the Old Testament begins. And it concludes by sounding the same note. In Malachi, the prophet thunders, "The people of God have married

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the daughter of a foreign god." Zephaniah says, "God will cut off those who worship the starry host."

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In Micah, we are told that Samaria's idols will be broken down. Hosea says that the bride of God has become unfaithful to him.

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And Jeremiah says that the bride of God has gone out to high places and committed adultery with other gods. The message you see is the same.

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Throughout all of the pages of the Old Testament, we are told God will tolerate no rivals. Now this commandment does not say that there are no rivals.

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There is nothing in this commandment which suggests that there are no other gods. What is said is that these other gods may never be brought

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even before the face of the God who is God. And it's right at this point that most of those who seek to interpret this commandment get into difficulty and make fundamental errors.

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You see, they start to talk about this commandment and then they start to talk about the false gods of our day. And they'll talk about things like money or sex or alcohol or the seeking of prestige and power

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and they will call these things false gods. Well, the love of all of these things, the love of money or sex or alcohol or prestige and power, all of these things, the love of them,

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is condemned in the Old Testament. But none of these things have any relationship to this commandment. This commandment is not talking about things

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that we make into gods. To interpret the commandment that way is to spiritualize it and allergize it. What the commandment actually says is this,

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that we may not be polytheists. We may not worship any other gods. God, the God, is to be first in our lives. I think of it in terms of the editor of a Scottish newspaper

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who was advertising a series of religious meetings and he did it in an interesting way. On the front page of his paper in large letters he put the words,

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"Please turn to the back page of this paper." And then on the back page of the paper, in even larger letters he said, "Is this where you put God in your life?"

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What this commandment is saying to us is, "Is God the front page matter in your life? "Is God at the center of your experience?" You know, when the ancient Israelites would set their camps

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they would always put the Ark of the Covenant, which represented the presence of God, in the center of the camp. It was the hub.

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It was the center. It was the principal focus. It was that place around which the life of the whole encampment moved.

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And what this commandment says to us is, "Have you put God at the hub, at the core of your life "so that no other deity is ever even brought before his face?" Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, put it this way,

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"Do we have purity of heart?" That is, do we will only one thing, and that one thing is to be responsive and obedient to the God who is God?

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See, this commandment really does two things. First of all, it warns us of the perils of polytheism. There are real dangers in worshiping more than one God. In the first place, polytheism breeds insecurity.

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I will never forget one very hot January afternoon when I was in the city of Lomé, which is the capital of Togo land in Africa. I was taken by a friend of mine to see a fetish market.

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The market was about the size of a football field. And here were individuals trying to sell all kinds of religious articles, charms, amulets, magic mixtures, and potions.

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There was line after line of dead dogs and dead cats and dead lizards and dead birds and all kinds of dead creatures that were mixed into these potions and put into these amulets.

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And walking up and down were individuals who were trying to sell these things, claiming that their God or their charm or their amulet was worth much more than all of the others there displayed.

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Now imagine that you were to come to such a place. And suppose you yourself were seriously ill or someone whom you loved was seriously ill, and you wanted God to know about this

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and God to move in this situation. And here are all these people saying to you, "My God is best. My God is best. Try this charm. Try this amulet. Taste this potion."

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Can you see the insecurity that would be there? How doubtful you would be as to which one you should do. And it's a life and death matter, a matter of great urgency. And you can find no answer.

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Let me bring this more to our situation here. If God is your God, then you believe that what God says is right. If God is your God,

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then He is the source of truth in your experience. And you can rely upon that truth. And you can build your life upon that truth. But suppose there was no God whom you could so trust.

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Suppose, for example, every time you had a question, there was no place that you could anchor your belief. Suppose there was no sweet certainty in your life. Polytheism undermines certainty and thus creates insecurity.

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Do you remember the Old Testament story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? How those three young men were committed to the God who was God? And how they tried to get them to bow down to other gods, and they refused to do so,

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and in punishment they threw them into a fiery furnace. And they lived through that fiery furnace, and in fact while they were in the furnace, an angel of God came and stood with them.

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Where did they gain that power? Where did they gain that certainty that they were willing to go into the flames because of what they believed? They gained it because there was a fire already in their hearts,

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and that fire was a fire of love for the God who is God. And when that fire burns, then no other fires have effect. Polytheism, you see, makes one insecure,

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but the certainty that God is God, that gives power and security. That's one of the reasons God says to us, "Thou shalt bring no other gods before my face."

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The other great peril in polytheism is that it takes away from us ultimate responsibility. I mean, if you are not committed to God as your God, if you are shopping about from one deity to another,

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there's really no demand placed upon you. You can shift your allegiances whenever you wish. You can haul down your colors and bring up other colors whenever it suits your caprice.

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That's what happened to the Jews in the Old Testament. They met God while they were in the wilderness. Then they moved into an agricultural environment, and some of them wondered,

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"Is the God of the wilderness also the God of this agricultural context?" And they began to go after other gods, fertility gods, the Baals. They found it very easy, you see, to drift because they had not made an ultimate commitment to this God.

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You remember the story of Elijah and the priests and the prophets of Baal atop Mount Carmel? And they had that contest? The priests and prophets of Baal offered some sacrificed animals,

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and then they prayed that their gods, the Baals, would come down and burn up the sacrifices. And they worked themselves into an orgiastic fury in their worship. They gouged themselves and splattered their sacrifices with their own blood.

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And the sacrificed animals just were there rotting beneath the Syrian sun. No Baals came. And then Elijah, the prophet of the one God who was God, drew near. And he laid out his sacrifice, and he soaked it in water,

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and he dug a moat around it, and he filled that moat with water. And then he stood back and prayed that the God who was God would consume that sacrifice in fire. And a great fire fell from heaven and burned the sacrifice,

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consumed the stones, licked up the water in the moat. And then Elijah turned to those who were watching and said, "How long will you limp between two opinions? "If the Lord be God, then serve him,

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"and if Baal be God, then follow him." Now that word "limp" is exactly the right word. Because you see, when a person serves a number of gods, they're always limping, they're always stumbling from one to another,

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they're always wandering about, and there is no final commitment. There is no act in which one says, "I will never again bring any other god before your face." This commandment, you see, calls us away from that polytheism

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which obliterates responsibility. There are then two reasons why we reject polytheism, because it robs us of final authority and because it robs us of ultimate responsibility.

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But there are some positive reasons why God gives us this commandment also. If there is a peril in polytheism, there's also incredible power in worshipping only the God who is God. First of all, there is the recognition that God covers all of life.

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You see, when you understand the Lord to be the sovereign Lord, then you understand Him to be above every other thing that is, every government, every institution, anything else that one can conceive. It was this conviction that led part of the German church

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to remain faithful to God when Hitler and his brown shirts were taking over their country. Hitler wanted to be called the Führer, which means the absolute master. But Martin Niemöller, a Protestant pastor in Germany at that time,

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wrote a book and published it called "God is My Führer." He refused to give to Hitler what he alone would give to God. The church stood fast, and the church was praised by this. Even Albert Einstein singled out the church

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and commended it for alone standing against Hitler. And why was it that the church did that? Why did the church hold fast to truth when the universities and the courts and the newspapers

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all fell under Hitler's charms and sway? Why, because the church had the first commandment. Niemöller went on and wrote another book which he called "First Commandment." If you look at that book, it's nothing but a collection of biblical sermons,

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but that was enough, because you see, he was saying that what the Bible says is absolute, and that there is no power on earth, no state, no organization, nothing that can take precedence over the God who is God.

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Walter Harrelson, probably one of the very foremost Old Testament scholars of our time-- he's the distinguished professor of Old Testament at Vanderbilt Divinity School--

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has an excellent new book on the commandments called "The Ten Commandments in Human Rights." And he says, "The way in which we really ought to translate this first commandment is, 'Thou shalt not take account of more than one fundamental reality in life.'"

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That is, one builds one's life upon the reality of God and tolerates no rival lord. Please turn your cassette to the other side. [silence]

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Remember the story of Naboth and his vineyard in the Old Testament? How King Ahab wanted Naboth's vineyard, didn't know how to get it? King Ahab had a wife named Jezebel, she knew how to get it. She brought false charges against Naboth,

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had him accused, arrested, tried, and executed. And then she gave the vineyards to her husband, the king. And when Ahab came to claim the vineyard, there standing at the gate was Elijah, the prophet of God.

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And Ahab, looking at him, said, "Hast thou found me, O my enemy?" And Elijah responds, "I have found thee." God finds anyone who sets themselves up over against him. Here was a king who thought he could stand above the law of God.

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He's found of God and judged by God and condemned by God. [silence] That's the reason Christians, those committed to the one God who is God, are the implacable, unalterable enemies of any who would claim any divinity.

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God covers all of life. Another thing that comes out of this commandment, another incredible power which belongs to those who believe it is this, you discover that God is always reliable,

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that there is in him no variableness and no shadow of turning, that he is the same yesterday and today and forever. How do you think it was that Jeremiah could stand and in the name of God condemn his own people

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when his own people called him a traitor? Where did he get the strength to do that? Out of his knowledge that God is dependable and reliable. When Saint Augustine wrote the city of God

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and Rome, the then center of the world, was being sacked by barbarians, when all of the society about him was sick and he sat down and wrote these words, "How God's city is alone to eternal,"

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where do you think he got that conviction? Where that certitude? It was from this commandment which asserts the fact that God is always reliable.

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No other gods are necessary. When Martin Luther stood before a parliament in Worms and they said to him, "You must recant," where did Luther get the courage to say to the nation's leaders and an emperor,

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"Unless I am convinced of God, I cannot lay aside this which I have proclaimed." Where that certainty? From this commandment.

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The reliability of God. If I can depend upon God, I don't need to depend on anybody else. Where did the pilgrims who set sail from the old world to the new world, confronting all the difficulties which were part of that new life here,

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where did they get the conviction and certainty which you read in their official documents and also in their private diaries? It came from this. They were certain that they could depend upon God,

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that nothing could shake or deter him. He was always reliable. Where did Archbishop Luan in Uganda, this man who stood up against the beast, Idi Amin,

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a man who was more an animal than he was a man, where did Luan get the strength to do that? When they arrested him, when they beat him, when they tortured him, when they murdered him,

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and then tried to cover it over with a lie, where the courage that enabled him to stand as he stood? It was his confidence that God, the God who is God, is always and forever reliable.

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Where just a few months ago did Archbishop Romero in El Salvador get the courage to stand up in his cathedral and say to the leaders of his nation, "You must stop shooting your own people.

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In the name of God, I order you to stop." You know what they did to him? They shot him. They assassinated him as he said mass in his own church.

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But the name of Romero and the spirit of Romero will live when those tin-pot dictators are brought down to a very dusty death. Because, you see, he relied on the ultimate certainty,

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the God who is God. Whenever you are afraid, whenever timidity creeps in and you back off from a stand, instead of doing that, breathe deeply.

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And when you exhale, say, "I breathe out fear." And when you inhale, say, "I breathe in the reliability of God." And when you exhale, say, "I breathe out doubt." And when you inhale, say, "I breathe in the courage

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that belongs to those who belong to God." And when you exhale, say, "I breathe out anxiety." And when you inhale, pray, "I breathe in the spirit of the living God."

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This commandment points us to the total, unquestionable reliability of God. And just one last thing. This commandment also reminds us that God saves to the uttermost. Other gods divide us.

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They turn us into spiritual schizophrenics. But when one gives oneself to the holy mystery of God, to that one who is the ground on which everything else rests for its being, then one knows that this is the God who saves and who saves completely.

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All other powers, even though they approach us on the deepest levels of our lives, all other powers are nothing when compared to the unity and the holiness and the strength and the infinite power, what Isaiah called the incomparable-ness of God.

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If only those who were tonight in darkness would believe that, they would find in their commitment to God that light which never turns to shadow. If only those in the world tonight who are discouraged about the cause of justice and mercy and truth would realize that they can give themselves to the God who is in Himself justice and mercy and truth.

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If only people would grasp this and live by it, it would make them at one and the same time more humble and more brave. I read somewhere of a man who died and went to heaven and there God showed him the history of his life.

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That history was a set of footprints moving along a sandy beach and beside this set of footprints there was another set of footprints that was visible beside the first set at almost every point, but not everywhere. And God said, "This is the history of your life

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and you will see that I have walked with you every step of the way." And the man said, "Not so, Lord, because I can see there are some places where that second set of footsteps disappears and those places were the toughest and the hardest and the most painful and difficult times of my life.

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Why were you not with me then?" And God looked at him with a great, lifting, loving, caring smile and he said, "I was with you then." That one set of footprints at those places, those are my footprints.

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"Then I was carrying you." If only all of us would learn that in yielding totally to the one God who is God, we will have present and available to us one who walks with us every step of the way except those moments when we cannot walk at all.

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Then he lifts us and carries us. I know that some of you already know that of which I speak. I know that some of you have already touched the sunlit peaks of Sinai and Golgotha. I know that some of you understand very deeply that man is made to be mastered

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and he will either be mastered by God or he will be mastered by something or someone so much less than God. I know that some of you are aware of the truth that God and God alone is worthy of our self-offering and that in that self-offering we find peace,

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that perfect peace which passes all understanding. My prayer is that all of us will come to know the infinity of the love of God and to understand that no expression of God's love was ever more tenderly offered to us than when he said to them and to us,

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"My little children, don't ever bring any other thoughts before my face." Let us pray. Oh God, deliver us from chasing after anything unworthy of our allegiance. Claim us totally for yourself and give to us in that claim the knowledge that you cover all,

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that you are always reliable and that you and you alone save to the uttermost. We pray it in the name of Jesus. And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.

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The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give to you and to all those whom you love and to all those whom nobody loves his peace. Amen.