The First Commandment - Part 1

I know I sound like a broken record, but I love that. That is so great. You come to this church, you're going to sing the psalms word for word, the way God wrote them, you know, music that Burt puts to it. But we're actually memorizing. I mean, if you've been with us, you've memorized 15 psalms now, without even trying, you're just singing the songs. and so let me go to Exodus 20 1 to 17 we'll actually be doing a bit of work in Exodus 20 this week instead of the prep work and God spoke all these words saying I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery you shall have no other gods before me you shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above 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. For I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain, for Yahweh will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. On it you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates. for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth the sea and all that is in them but rested and rested on the seventh day therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that Yahweh your God has given you you shall not murder, 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. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's. Pray with me. Father, we ask you to bless our time in your word today. We know that we cannot even understand these things if your Holy Spirit doesn't open our eyes to understand them and open our hearts to receive them.

And so we pray that you would do the work that only you can do and that you would work in us that we may do what we are called to do. So I pray for attentive hearts. I pray for soft hearts. And I pray that you would help me by the anointing of your Holy Spirit to preach your truth without shame. Amen. You may be seated.

OK, we spent a few weeks talking about the Ten Commandments. and I guess if I try to rehash everything every week I'm just going to end up spending the whole time on an intro. But the important thing to understand is that we believe the Ten Commandments is applicable to the Christian today. We believe that as a Christian you are actually called to obey the Ten Commandments.

And that does not conflict with the gospel of grace. we have discussed that from chapter 19 so one of the questions would be well if if the law couldn't save us the ten commandments if it couldn't actually give you eternal life if that which promised you life was death to you what's the purpose of it what good is it if most preachers are going to get up and tell you well you couldn't obey the law and even if you tried And even had you done it, it couldn't have saved you. Only Christ could save you. So you say, well, what's the good use of the law?

And then if they say, even as a Christian, you're going to keep failing to obey the law. There's going to be times you're going to continue to fail to actually do what God has said because you still carry a sinful flesh. Chapter 6 of paragraph 19 tells us, although true believers are not under the law as a covenant of works. So you're not in a covenant with the law as your guardian. to be justified or condemned.

It says it is of great use to them as well as to others in that as a rule of life, informing them of the will of God in their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly. So one of the uses of the law is that it tells you how to live. The fact that the law could not save you is okay. It doesn't mean the law is bad. The law tells you how to live. listen to some other benefits of the law.

It helps you discover the sinful pollutions of your natures and your hearts and your lives. The law helps you to discover these things. As a Christian, you actually desire to see those things removed from you and live differently. So that by examining yourself, you may come to further conviction of and hatred against sin. God revealing His law to us actually helps you to know what sin is so that you can come to more hatred for it.

It offers you a clearer sight of the need you have for Christ. You need Christ today just like you needed Him the day you were saved. You don't graduate from needing Christ. Some people kind of think that's how Christianity works. No, you need Christ today and your dependence upon Him is often motivated by when you see yourself compared to his law, how far short you fall from it.

Also it of use to restrain your corruption How so Remember the law doesn have power to actually change you The Holy Spirit had to do that through regeneration and the washing of regeneration But what the law does is it forbids sin and the threatenings of the law, so the punishments that the law promises, serve to show you what your sins deserve and what afflictions in this life you may expect for them. so understanding the punishments that accompany God's law should motivate the right thinking person into right behavior now it won't give you the power but it should give you the information you need to rely on Christ and his spirit to help you so I just want to read this part Though you're not due the cursings or blessings of the law as a covenant of works, it helps you understand the purpose of the good rules. So it says, I like this part, because the law encourages you to one thing or deters you from another thing, it is not evidence that you're under the law and not under grace. We can still say we're under grace, yet obey God's law.

And this is something that some versions of Christianity don't actually believe. So before we get into the first commandment, I want to share one thing. Turn to Psalm 40. In Psalm 40, the book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus Christ said this when he was walking on the earth. Of course, Jesus Christ did many things that are not recorded in the Scripture, that are not recorded in the Gospels.

But in Psalm 40, verse 6, this is a quote of Jesus. He says, In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. So this was the author of Hebrews' way, and I think it's chapter 10, of trying to explain to the people what Jesus came to do, and that Jesus' message was no different than his message to the Hebrews about the Old Covenant.

And he says, then I said, behold, I have come in the scroll of the book. It is written of me. And now Jesus is saying in the book, this is written about me. And now listen to what it says. I delight to do your will, O God. Your law is within my heart.

I can stand here for the next 20 weeks or the next 10 weeks or 30 weeks, however long this takes. and I can tell you all the neat things about God's law. I can tell you all. I mean, I can do that for a long, long time. I can apply God's law to your life. I can tell you answers to questions we may have about how to obey certain parts of the law. We can do all of that stuff and we're going to do a lot of it.

I can tell you how important it is and how wonderful it is and I can stand here, I can smile and tell you I think it's great. I can get real serious. We can do all sorts of things to help you understand what God's law is for and how it can help you with your life even. If you do not delight in God's law, you're not going to obey it. And if you do not delight in God's law and you choose to obey the letter of it outwardly, it'll have no help for you.

Listen to what Spurgeon said. Spurgeon said, Obedience rendered without delight in rendering it is only half obedience. I'm going to repeat that for you. obedience rendered, so obedience given, if you don't know what it rendered me, obedience given to an authority, rendered without delight in rendering it, is only half obedience. That's why you kids, when your parents tell you to do something and you do it grumbling, even though you did the thing they asked, they're still angry with you?

Yeah, I'm looking at you kids in here. But I have a feeling it's not just the children that fail at that. I have a feeling that every single one of us as people with sinful flesh often find ourselves doing that which we know is our duty, but not doing it cheerfully. And that's one thing maybe if you have an employer that's kind of a difficult guy, like if your boss tells you you've got to wear a mask at work so you do it anyway, okay, I'm all right with maybe you doing half obedience in certain situations maybe, but when it comes to God, every single command of God is perfect. there is nothing that God has told us in his law that you should have a problem with where is that quote oh did I turn too many pages oh here it is sorry I had a couple quotes so the other quote that Spurgeon said love is the chief jewel in the bracelet of obedience.

So what I want you to understand is that as Jesus delighted in God's will and said his law was within his heart, that is what you are supposed to do. The psalmist says in Psalm 119, I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. But also if you turn to Psalm 119 and you turn to verse 92, the psalmist speaking as well as this is Jesus, of course, he says, If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.

There's four more verses in just Psalm 119 that talks about God's law being his delight. But what I want you to see here is that it's actually delighting in God's law that in this case is preserving the person's life from affliction. They still have affliction, but it's the delight in God's law that enables them to endure those kinds of things. Psalm 1 verse 2 Jumping around a little bit I shouldn even say that You guys know what it means to jump around I don have to tell you that what we doing I guess Psalm 1 verse 2 Sometimes you using filler words so that people have time to turn there Because what I really want to hear is pages turning.

And I think I want people to see the scripture. I can get up and I can read scriptures and I can quote scriptures. And if all you do is listen to me, I think it's not going to be effective. I think a lot of times you need to have your eyes on the text in your Bible. You know where on the page it is. You read it.

The Holy Spirit uses the preached word at the time you're looking at it to maybe have an impact on you. And then that's going to stick in you better than if you just listen to a guy. OK, but Psalm 1, verse 2, speaking of the blessed man, his delight is in the law of Yahweh. And on his law, he meditates day and night. You should delight in God's law. Now, let me help you understand this. in 1 John 3 1 John 5 verse 3 sorry we're told that his commandments are not burdensome that the love of God is that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome what I want you to understand is that if you find God's law to be a chore if you find God's law to be something you fight to even want to obey you should maybe go back to the basics of salvation.

Because what God promises is that those who He regenerates, those whom He has elected unto salvation, who He calls outwardly and inwardly, and then grants faith in Jesus Christ in this life, whose hearts have been turned from hearts of stone to hearts of flesh, God promises us, we saw this in Ezekiel, we saw it in Jeremiah, that he will write his law in your heart and that you will love his law. And the battle you have to disobey his law is not your inner desire to obey his law. It's actually your sinful flesh fighting against your inner desire.

The inner man's been made new. You delight in God's law in the inner man. That's Romans 7.22. The battle is with your flesh. And so if you believe that however many years ago or however many days or months ago, for you, if you believe that Jesus Christ saved your soul, that you're a sinner who is condemned unclean in Adam, that you were in Adam when he sinned in that garden, as Mike and I were talking about today, that the best man ever made failed to keep God's law in the garden.

And if you think for a second you'd have done better than Adam, that just shows your pridefulness. Because if you were in the garden, the only thing different would have been you would have sinned faster than it took Adam. And I don't think it took Adam long. That's a different discussion. But if you believe you were an Adam and you were helplessly sinful and there wasn't a thing you could do to be pleasing to God because everything about you hated him and even your outward obedience to his revealed will showed him nothing but your pridefulness and self-exaltation and your desire to justify yourself by your own works. if you believe that was true about you and that God sent his son into the world Jesus Christ who became a man who lived a sinless life that you were supposed to live that you couldn't live and never lived and wouldn't have lived and then he died on the cross in your place paying the punishment that you were supposed to get because he was sinless and he didn't deserve to die if you believe he did that for you and then he died and was buried and rose again three days later so that you could be justified before a holy God.

And you don't have an inner desire to simply do what he's told you? I question if you believe the other stuff. And I mean every point of it. It's not okay to think, well, I think six of his commandments are great. I was half-joking with Jason this day. Some people hate all ten commandments.

They're called Democrats. Some people, just like the last six, they're called Republicans. Okay? And I'll explain that later if you don't understand what I mean. But there's a little bit to that, and I think I'm right. But what I want you to understand is we're to love God's whole law.

And you can't keep part of it. Book of James, chapter 2, verse 10. I want you to see this verse. So turn to James 2.10. and then at some point here I'll start my sermon for this week. James 2.10 Super important verse. I remember it because my birthday is February 10th so those ones are easy for me.

He says, for whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. And so your desire is to keep God's law. Your failures at it Should cause you to moan before God and beg him for mercy and help. Because he does promise that help in your time of need. If you boldly come to the throne of grace through Jesus Christ. He will answer those prayers of saints.

And so we must delight in God's law. And so when I teach you about God's law. When I teach you about the first commandment, the second commandment, the third one, all the way to the tenth one. what I want you to remember is that these are good. This is not a situation like most people have concocted in their mind where there's a whole bunch of really great stuff in the world that people like to do and then God comes in and just wants to crush the fun.

That's not the God we serve. In fact, the God we serve has told us exactly how you can have the maximum amount of joy in this life. And it's through following the restrictions he's given you because I hate I hate using the words. You don want your kids to stay at home but because frankly we too stupid to figure it out because we go and we just jump into the dumb things because they seem enjoyable for a moment Not realizing that God said it bad and therefore it bad even if we don understand why it bad even if it feels really good at the time And so we are to trust that when God says, I am Yahweh your God, I'm in Exodus 20, we're finally actually exegeting part of this chapter now, which reminder, I told you to try to memorize it and I hope people are working on it because we're four weeks into it now and some of you should be able to quote a quarter of it at least by now.

Exodus 21 to 17 is what I challenged you with. But when he says, I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, you shall have no other gods before me, he means it. And he means it because it's good for you, partially. Now ultimately, everything is for God's glory. And that's a wonderful thing, because if God was not actually fighting and doing things for his own glory, if he didn't command things for his own glory, then it wouldn't be good for you either.

God being for God first is actually good for you. You understand? But it is good for us. So we look at the Baptist confession, and in this one here, which I just ordered a bunch more of from Chapel Library, and they should be here any day. I'll have them next Sunday, I hope. This one here, the blue one, has the Baptist catechism in it.

So you have the confession, which is the 32 chapters that tells us what we believe. But then in the catechism, there's these questions and answers that help us to understand God's word. And so I want to look at some of them with you now. Question 47. What is the sum of the Ten Commandments? The sum of the Ten Commandments is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind, and our neighbor as ourselves.

That's what Jesus said in Matthew 22. He says there's really two summary commandments. The first four commandments of the Ten Commandments tell us how we are supposed to love God. How we're supposed to be disposed toward God. The last six commandments tell us how to be disposed toward one another and toward our neighbor. The last six commandments being obeyed requires that you're obeying the first four.

And this is something that people don't understand. you can't obey the sixth commandment and violate the first four if you violate any of the first four you're actually hating your neighbor so if you're in your house all by yourself and you're worshipping an idol I'm going to tell you you hate your neighbor even though that commandment is in the first four because if you don't love God you can't love your neighbor alright anyone who doesn't love God who he has not seen. He can't love his brother. And vice versa is true.

And so, that's the sum of the Ten Commandments. Love God and love your neighbor. And then the Ten Commandments gives us a little more detail how to do that. 48. What is the preface to the Ten Commandments? The preface is in these words.

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And then this tells us what does the preface teach us? This is really neat. I mean, you just sit and read the catechism and you're just going to understand all sorts of scripture and then it even has the scriptures to look up to help you understand it. It says the preface to the Ten Commandments teaches us that because God is the Lord and our God and Redeemer, therefore we're bound to keep all His commandments.

So as I just said, as I just preached the gospel to you and I told you if you really believe that the result should be an obedience to Him that comes from the heart. It should be your desire. You should want to know what is lost. I remember becoming a Christian and wanting so badly to know what the Word said. Because I wasn't raised Christian. I didn't know what the things were in here.

And I wanted to learn them. And then some of them started rubbing me the wrong way. And what I had to realize was I was the wrong one. Not God's Word. so God the command here is you shall have no other gods before me and that seems like kind of a weird command and I actually before I was a Christian one of the things I read about that that I bought into was that by God saying you shall have no other gods before me it was actually God's way of saying there are other gods I'm not the only God that was a misreading that somebody had taught me and I bought a hook line and sinker because well I hated God and I was willing to do anything to have other gods if you read your catechism what you'll see is it says what are we especially taught by the words before me in the first commandment the words before me okay I always I heard it as well God has to be first but then I can have other gods like after.

That's how I understood it. And it's wrong. So if you just heard that part of the sermon, like that's bad. All right. The words before me in the first commandment teach us that God who sees all things takes notice of and is much displeased with the sin of having any other gods. Turn to Deuteronomy six.

Deuteronomy six, we see the Shema they call it verse 4 hear O Israel Yahweh our God Yahweh is one in Exodus 3 14 when Moses says what shall I tell the Egyptians that who sent me what shall I tell the people who sent me when Moses asked God and God says tell them the I am sent you I am that I am there's no predicate nominative to God. So if you know any grammar, you understood that. But what I mean is this.

When God says I am, when we say I am, we say I am something. because we just don't exist. We're not self-existent. We're made up of things. When I say I am, I am happy, I am sad, I am flesh, I am 45, whatever it happens to be, when we say we are, there's something more fundamental than us that we are. But God says I am that I am. He's the self-existent one.

He's composed of nothing. He has no body, parts, or passions we see in our confession. And it doesn't say he has no body parts. It says he has no body, comma, parts. So what it's saying is he has no body and he has no parts and he has no passions. That's how we are.

We have bodies. We have passions and we're made of parts. We're made up of little things called atoms. And there's something smaller than atoms that atoms are made up of. And there's something there that we'll never probably figure out even. But God is one.

And the theological term for this is that he's simple. So what I want to do with the first commandment is I want to tell you about this God a little bit. I just want to tell you about it. We're not going to get into how to obey it today, unless I do the rabbit trail thing that I do all the time anyway. But I want to tell you who he is. I just want to tell you about him.

I want to reveal to you what it says about him in the scripture so that you'll know who he is who's this God that we're supposed to have no other gods before and what does it mean that he's one and he's God so in chapter 2 of our confession I just want to tell you about him the Lord our God is but one only living and true God whose subsistence is in and of himself infinite in being in perfection infinite infinite in being we don't even know what that word means we know what to do in math when you get infinity or whatever but we really have no concept of it everything about us is finite our understanding is finite our persons are finite we have no concept even of infinity don't scratch the surface of it let me put it that way we don't understand it, we can't comprehend it. He's infinite in being and perfection. This is the God that says you should worship Him and not to have other gods.

And every single one of us if we were a little bit honest with ourselves we should be able to find a whole bunch of other things that we worship instead of Him once in a while. Maybe it's momentary. Maybe it's only when we're really tired or really hungry that we do some of these things. Some of us have deceived ourselves into thinking the things we do are for God when really it's for us.

People make all sorts of gods up. It's real easy to say, oh those Hindus, they're horrible. They have all these millions of gods. I can't even name them all. That's easy for a Christian to do. But it's not so easy to look at whether or not you worship money.

Or maybe you worship sports. Or maybe you idolize celebrities of different kinds. You may not like the normal celebrities, but you may have your own celebrities that you worship in different ways. You may even idolize certain preachers, good ones. You may idolize ministry. Do you know that you can actually make an idol out of doing good works in the church?

A lot of people may shipwreck their faith out of that stuff. There's one God, and he's worthy of worship. He's the one who's infinite in perfection. Listen, whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but himself. God's incomprehensible. Now let me explain that.

It means God cannot be fully comprehended. It means you can never fully grasp who he is and understand him. It even says here, by any but himself. So God understands that he's not so incomprehensible that he can't understand himself, right? But what we need to understand with this is that God can be known. He cannot be fully known because he's God and we won't know him.

But you can know things about God. You can actually know him personally. So the theological terms people use, and I know I'm throwing a lot at you here, so if it's too much, we'll talk about it after. We'll talk about it more in the weeks. But you can apprehend God. You cannot comprehend God is the way people say it. so God is not unknowable when we say he's incomprehensible what we're saying is that you will never exhaust knowledge of God what that means is that for all of eternity you will always be learning more and more about this great God and you will never get bored with him do you know why you get bored with that computer game you put on your phone and you played it non-stop for like six weeks and now you forgot it's on there because you master it.

You start to know everything there is to know about it to a point where it's just not fun anymore. It's why no one in here under 11 probably, or over 11 plays tic-tac-toe, right? You already know what's going to happen. And if you don't, watch that movie, War Games or whatever. But God will never get boring. You'll be in heaven worshiping him and it'll always be exciting. and we'll always be discovering a little more of how glorious he is and how perfect.

He's the most pure spirit. Invisible. And then it says without body parts or passions So God is a spirit And those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth Right We know that from John 4 So God doesn have a body I just see you know if you listen to my conversation with the Mormons they straight up believe the Heavenly Father, they call him, and Jesus have bodies.

It's a heresy. If you do not believe the truth about God, who are you worshiping then? Do you understand? If you don't understand who God is, and then you're offering worship to whatever you think God is, chances are you're actually worshiping an idol that can't save your soul. And the real God's not listening to your prayers while you're worshiping that idol.

He requires that you believe who he is. You can't deny things like whoever denies Jesus Christ came in the flesh is the Antichrist, he said. You have to believe Jesus really became a man. You know, there's people that think, oh, becoming human is just such a horrible thing because humanity is pretty messed up. But they say, well, Jesus probably never became a human.

He was just a hologram or an apparition. I think they're called Apollinarians, I think, if I remember all the heresies correctly. But the point is, is if you deny that Jesus became a human being, you don't actually believe that a human priest went before God on your behalf and made a sacrifice and you don't have a sacrifice for sins so I know for some of you it sounds kind of lofty like oh we're talking about the doctrine of simplicity and we're talking about the doctrine of impassibility and I can tell you all the big words if you want and some of them I'll say wrong and some of them I'll say right some of them you've never heard of and some of them you know better than I do maybe but the point is this, you get the wrong God and you go to hell and you don't go to hell because you didn't understand it you don't go to hell because the pastor didn't explain it you go to hell because of your sin and it's your sin that blocks you from even listening to the teaching and so we pray we pray for everyone in this room we pray for people around the world that God would open their hearts we go to Planned Parenthood tomorrow and we can stand there the entire time and forget perfect preaching we can just read God's word, it's infallible We just stand and read God's word.

Nobody's going to hear it or understand it unless God works in their heart first. So we should be praying people. But God doesn't have a body. He doesn't have parts. This is the doctrine of simplicity. He's the only being without parts.

God is one. And I'll try to explain it to you just a little bit. If God's made of anything else, if God was made of love and grace and mercy and just a little bit of holiness too. If those four things made up God, then each one of those wonderful things we could talk about would actually be more fundamental than God himself. There can't be anything that pre-exists God.

And God can't be composed. He can't be composite. He can't be made up of other things. God simply is love. God is grace. God is mercy. and some of these are arguable how they're manifested God is just God is righteous everything that God is, God is I am that I am and so we don't, I've heard people say God is the sum of all his attributes no he's not if he was the sum of all his attributes then that means one of those could be taken away and he'd be different and he's unchanging it says God doesn't have passions this one's tough for people to swallow because we're passionate and because God's word expresses so often times God's disposition towards men love and hatred for sin, love for his people and these are these are things where God uses language to help us understand but God doesn't change and your passions, your feelings those are things that where outside events happen from time to time and you change your state.

So God doesn't have feelings and passions the way we do. To understand those things is a little deeper. But the point is, he's not like you. And he's not like me. And thank God. There's already a guy like me out there.

And I'll tell you what, we didn't need him. All right? The world would have been fine without me. It'll be fine when I'm gone. But we needed God. He's the one that's different and unique from us so we can go deeper some of these things are hard things and I'm not going to pretend like you're going to walk out of here and say oh I understand simplicity and impassibility first time I heard these things they were brand new to me if they're new to you that's fine we'll talk about them but it's in our confession you've got to know this God let's see this God He only hath immortality He can't die that's why it's really so amazing that Jesus became a man and died I mean this is so foreign to God everything about creation is actually foreign to God it's outside God God isn't created there's really two categories of beings there's created things and there's the uncreated and that's God he's in a category by himself it's not like we're a lot like God and then monkeys and ants are real different we're with the monkeys and ants and cucumbers and then God's on the other side somewhere.

He's outside of time. It's unfathomable. You think about fathoms if you've ever been fishing, right? You send something down and if it goes down so far and then the sonar bounces back, you know, it was this many fathoms. So you know it was 200 feet to the bottom and back. You see how deep something is by sending down your sonar and you get the fathoms, right?

So when we say God unfathomable means you can never get to the bottom So if you just dove into we just say if there was like water that taught you about God and you just dove down and the deeper you got the more you learned about God you just never get to the bottom The bottomless pit of perfection. He's dwelling in the light no man can approach. He's immutable.

He doesn't change. Which is exactly why you haven't gone to hell yet. Because He promised and He's faithful and He doesn't change. He's immense. Bigger than we can imagine. He's eternal.

God's eternal in both directions. Okay, so we know that we're going to live forever, right? And I'm not talking about eternal life. Eternal life is knowing Jesus Christ. But we're going to live forever and your soul will never end. But you were created in time.

You have a start date. God doesn't God's completely eternal you'll hurt yourself thinking about it, in fact the psalm I do not set my mind on things too lofty and too high for me that psalm we sing, it makes me think there's a point where we say okay we're not going to we're not going to try to figure all this out some of it we just have to believe we learn how to explain it we learn how to talk about it so we're not heretics and at some point we stop trying to think we figured it out we just believe it The Trinity is a good example of that. You need to know how to explain the Trinity.

You need to know how to talk about it. You need to know how to not be a heretic. And you need to know how to identify somebody who is one. But if you start to pretend you comprehend the Trinity, now we have a problem, because you don't. He's incomprehensible. We talked about that.

He's almighty. Every way infinite. Most holy. Most wise. most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will for His own glory, most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and with all most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.

So when you're in Exodus 20, and this is in the Catechism too, so what I'm about to tell you, if you're like, wow, that's great, I just read it, somebody else wrote it. but in Exodus 20 when he says I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery that's the preface and he's explaining to them who he is and it's supposed to be motivation for why they should have no other gods before him there's no other gods before his sight and since he sees everything you should have no other it's a reminder that he's the God of your redemption. So while the Egyptians were wallowing in slavery, or the Israelites were wallowing in Egyptian slavery, while they had wicked taskmasters in this world that were making their life harder, it was God who redeemed them from there. He redeemed them with blood. and interestingly enough there was a whole thing going on where a first born son had to die for it all to happen and these Egyptians were delivered you can read the story I hope you do you can read the story of the Israelites being delivered from slavery where they had taskmasters making them do the stuff every day and then suddenly one day the Pharaoh says, hey, don't help them by bringing the straw over that they need to do what they're supposed to do, but tell them they still have to get the same amount of work done anyway, right?

And they complain and they moan and then God says, I want you to lead my people out of the slavery that they're in so that they might worship me. Do you remember that? The reason they gave the Pharaoh was they needed to worship God. And then they got out of there and they did some of this stuff. And what was one of the first things the Israelites did when they got out of their house of slavery?

Do you remember? Oh, when we were in Egypt, we had leeks and onions and whatever else, right? All of a sudden they started longing for the things that they had when they weren't following God. all of a sudden they remembered just the good times from their slavery instead of recognizing it as slavery and so here we are, we've been delivered from our slavery to sin you've been delivered from your slavery to the world system you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked carrying out the deeds of the body you were following the prince of the power of the air, right? the spirit of disobedience who's now at work and the sons of disobedience.

And then God quickens you and He makes you alive. And He gives you a new heart. And by grace you're saved through faith. It's not a result of anything you've done. It's only a result of His works and His granting of faith to you. And He says in Ephesians 2.10 that you would do the good works that He preordained for you to do.

Which good works, biblically defined, is basically doing the things God's law tells you to do. And some of you are longing for those days of sin You just longing for the good feelings that it brought you You not longing for all the devastation that you don remember anymore because God washed a lot of it away You not longing for the guilt and the shame that some of you felt regularly. The guilt and the shame that Christ washed away so you don't feel it so much sometimes.

And what I fear is that what God does to people who forget those things is God lets them go back in it. And that's confessional as well. God lets his people sometimes fall back into sin so that they might be reminded of how unsavory it is and so you shall have no other gods before him is the overarching theme of the ten commandments I'll tell you this if you're going to break commandments you're always going to break the first one and the tenth one if you break any of the ones in the middle because everything you do that breaks a commandment is putting something else before God and it's always coveting something that you don't have any right to have.

Whether it's just some kind of peace you think you want. But that first commandment is like the governor of everything. And if you obey the first commandment, if your heart is godly, if you're trying to practice godliness and you want to delight in God's law, that first commandment will motivate you. And it will help you to remember that you want to obey the other ones even when it's hard. because it's not always easy.

And there's the ethical dilemmas in life where you're not sure what to do. And somebody always comes up with some story where, well, what if this happened to you? Would you lie? And you know what? If you're trying to obey God's first commandment, some of those other answers get easier. And if you want to obey God's first commandment, that you have no other gods before Him, you'll be strict with yourself. you'll ask yourself hard questions like am I doing too much Facebook?

Do I drink too much alcohol? Do I try to change worldly things so I can make money? Do I make an idol out of beauty? Do I make an idol out of youthfulness? I kind of joked with Lauren and Elijah like Lauren's neighbor asked me if I was Elijah's dad yesterday so I said I'm going to shave my beard. I was just joking around just so I'd look younger for a couple weeks there's people that idolize these different things and so you can be a Christian and still have these other gods that you put before God you can choose to simply not follow Christ in all your ways if you have a problem you can go on the internet and you can say I have this problem and I want a Christian solution and you'll be given a list of non-Christian things that you can do to try to help you with your problem.

My little pet peeve is the Enneagram thing. People think the Enneagram is like what helps them with their Christian life or something. Christ helps you with your Christian life. The Spirit of God through His Word helps you with your Christian life. I want you to have the best. God wants you to have the best.

I know it sounds kind of trite, God wants you to have the best, but He does. God just happens to be the most holy, most wise, all-knowing, almighty being that ever existed and does exist and won't ever not exist. And he told us this is what's best. And it's Jesus Christ. And he gave him to us like wrapped as a gift. And so I want to encourage you as we start to go a little deeper into this to delight in God's law.

And to recognize that... I don't want to make too many analogies, But it's like when you give your kids healthy food and your kid doesn't want it because they want the candy or whatever the alternative might be. And you as the parent know, like, no, I'm actually giving you something that's good for you. And even though it doesn't taste as good as the other thing and it won't make you feel as good right now, I'm actually giving you something that's for your best.

Because I love you, I'm giving it to you and I'm withholding the other thing. And God does that infinitely more and better than we ever could. And we do it. We do it as parents. God does it perfect all the time. So trust Him.

Father in heaven, we are, of all people, most needy that Jesus Christ would meet with us, that your Spirit would enable us to worship you in spirit and truth. We have nothing to offer you on our own, yet we know that through your Son our worship is pleasing to you, and we ask that you would continuously cleanse our hearts of sin, help us to see the evil that still lies within us, that we may repent of it and have it forgiven and washed away, that we would enjoy the sanctification that you promised in this life. And help us even as we may enter a time of affliction and suffering in this world, Lord, that each individual Christian would be ready to be faithful to delight in your law that we would not perish in our affliction.

And I pray for those here today who do not yet know you, Lord, that you would send your spirit to convict them of sin, to open their eyes, to behold the wonders of your law, to grant them the faith in Jesus Christ that only you can grant. And that you would increase our faith, increase our love for Jesus Christ. and that we would hunger and thirst for righteousness and you have promised that those who do so will be satisfied. We thank you that Jesus is the satisfaction.

Help us to hunger for him. Help us to truly crave Jesus Christ, his person, to worship him in spirit and truth as the holy God. Amen.