Intellectual Defenestration

On simultaneously teaching and learning

As part of my struggle to become something like a remotely decent presenter, over the next couple of months I'm going to try completely writing out what I am going to teach in Sunday School and Bible studies before I teach. This doesn't mean that I'm going to read from this when I teach; I am merely attempting to get an idea of how to put together the scattered thoughts I have into something vaguely coherent.

Since I'm writing it all out anyway, and blogging time has been limited lately, I thought I'd try posting some of the notes. Maybe it will be beneficial to someone. More likely, someone will show me how I'm totally off my rocker (this would be quite helpful, actually).

So, here then, is roughly what I will be teaching Sunday night for the young adults class on the first commandment:

Exodus 20:1-3 And God spoke all these words, saying, "I am the LORD 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.

There are three things to discuss that will, Lord willing, help us to understand better what this commandment is and how to apply it in our lives: the covenantal context, the command, and the consummation in Christ.

The Covenantal Context

It is vital to understand that this is not some random command, nor is it the result of the arbitrary whim of a cold, unfeeling despot. The temptation at first glance is to think of this as, in a best case scenario, similar to the monopolistic tendencies of a company like Microsoft that forces users worldwide to use its products and its alone. In the worst case scenario, we tend to think of this as the whims of a tyrannical, megalomaniacal dictator ? similar to the Soviet dictators that made sure that their faces were plastered everywhere.

But the Biblical reality is much deeper and richer than that. This command comes not as an arbitrary tyrant attempting to hijack the actions of some random people, but as part of the summary expression of a holy and loving God in covenantal relationship with his people. The Biblical pattern is of an omnipotent and all-loving God redeeming his people from slavery and then calling on them to love him and him alone. Breaking this commandment is a sign of a broken covenantal relationship with God; Jeremiah 16:9-13, for example, speaks of God telling the Israelites that, because of their sins, they would be expelled from their land and his favor to then "serve other gods."

We can even see an echo of this in the garden (Gen 3:22-24). What, after all, was Adam's sin? It was to set himself above God, to decide that he, rather than God, could determine his own standard of living. The result is a broken relationship ? God expels Adam from the garden and curses him (although also providing for ultimate redemption).

Skip forward however many millennia to Abraham. In Gen. 17:1-14, God establishes a covenant with Abraham. The central statement here is what is repeated throughout the rest of Scripture: "I will be your God and you will be my people." God calls Abraham out of his family to the Promised Land and establishes an everlasting covenant with him. In this covenant, God calls Abraham to himself and then promises blessings as Abraham is faithful to the covenant (circumcision, here), and curses if Abraham is unfaithful. The pattern has now been set: God redeems his people, calls them to obey and serve him whole-heartedly, and promises blessings and curses based on their faithfulness.

In Deuteronomy 10:12-21, in what is most likely a further exposition of this commandment, God gives a sort of triad and then repeats it three times. God calls his people to:

1. Fear and obey God alone (vs. 12-13, 16, 19-20)
2. For God is mighty (vs. 14, 17, 21)
3. And God redeems (vs. 15, 18, 22)

Here, then, is a two-fold motivation for serving God and God alone: First, God is mighty and above all the earth. Second, God redeems; specifically, God has redeemed you. Our obedience and worship is based on the fact that God is worthy of worship because he is mighty and because he has saved us. This is neither mere moralism, nor the end result of an arbitrary egoism.

The promise through Jesus is that, one day, this commandment and covenantal relationship will be completely realized. In Rev. 21:1-4, John describes a vision in which God remakes the heavens and the earth, dwells with man, and promises, once again, that "they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God." The sin and death that Adam and Eve brought into the world is undone in a glorious manner by God himself. And it should be noted that the next several verses proceed to use this promise as a motivation to God's people to "conquer."

So, to sum up: this command is part of the framework of God's dealings with his people. Adam sinned by disobeying this command, but God restores the fellowship and promises blessings based upon obedience to Abraham and Moses. And God ultimately promises the fullest expression of this and greatest communion with him in the "new heavens and the new earth."

Now we have the context, so what does the command actually tell us to do?

The Command

This command is first a negative command, as it is given in the form of a prohibition: "you shall have no other gods before me." What, then, does it tell us not to do?

There is, of course, the obvious: don't have any gods but God alone. Looking back to Deuteronomy, in chapters 10-12, God gave very specific, even violent instructions to the Israelites on how to make sure that happened. First, the inhabitants of the land and all their gods were to be utterly and completely wiped out. Second, if anyone ever arose from Israel's midst encouraging them to follow other Gods, the punishment was extreme and final: death. No tolerance of any other gods, or anything that might even tempt them to other gods was to be permitted.

There are also implicit prohibitions. The Larger Catechism (Q. 105) gives a very long paragraph listing all the different elements that Scripture forbids. We only have time to look at a small few, so I encourage you to look this up sometime on your own and see, especially, the Scripture references that it uses to support this.

One of the first things that the WLC forbids is the "not giving to God what we should give." This is a prominent them in Deut 11, 12: the worship of God involves a giving to God of sacrifices, offerings, and tithes. In the New Covenant, not coming before God in worship, not giving him thanks and praise, and not tithing (!) are violations of this command.

Another implication of this command that we might not immediately think of is that thinking wrongly about God is a violation of this command. The WLC cites Ps. 50:21, where God tells Israel that "you thought I was just like you" and then rebukes them strongly. Bad theology, in the proper sense as "statements about God," is loving a God besides the true God. I'd encourage you to read Michael Horton's The Law of Perfect Freedom, as he gives many examples of bad theology and explanations of why they are sin, such as a failure to speak of God's justice and holiness and an over-exaltation of man's will and intrinsic goodness. What might be some other examples?

Two last implications to cover are pride and what we might call discontent. The first should be pretty self-explanatory. Pride, in a sense, is the ultimate idolatry. It is placing as God the most immediate thing available and worshipping it: oneself.

Discontent, though, was one thing that particularly challenged me. The WLC terms this "discontent and impatience at his dispensations, charging him foolishly for the evils he inflicts on us." Ps. 73:2-22 describes the struggle of the Psalmist to have faith in God when "the wicked prosper." He looks at those who are unfaithful, thinks that they should be judged, and becomes jealous of them. He has to remind himself that God is sovereignly and justly over even the acts of the wicked. And then he makes this strange statement: "When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you." To doubt and question God's goodness and control, even when times are difficult, is not placing God first and foremost in our lives. This, of course, is not to deny the place of grief and anguish when pain and suffering hit ? Jesus showed great sorrow when faced with the results of the curse. But, if our grief and anguish, we despair of God's goodness and judge his wisdom, we have placed our own sense of goodness and wisdom above his.

We have discussed the negative implications. What are the positive?

The sum of what this requires is whole-hearted worship of God. To look again at Deuteronomy, in ch. 12:11-14, the Israelites are required to show that God deserves all by giving him sacrifices, tithes, and their first fruits. They are then to "rejoice" before God with the covenant community by eating and fellowshipping with those around him. The WLC uses a variety of verbs to describe this: "meditating, remembering, highly esteeming, honouring, adoring, choosing, loving, desiring, fearing of him; believing him; trusting, hoping, delighting, rejoicing in him; being zealous for him." Nothing less than worship from our hearts, souls, and minds will suffice.

And, lastly, to love and obey God before all else encompasses all of our lives. In Lev. 11:44-45 God asserts his lordship and kingship and then immediately calls on his people to "be holy as I am holy." God's covenant people are called on to live in a manner that mirrors their covenant head. This of course, is where the other 9 commandments come in.

The Consummation

But no discussion of this will be complete without seeing Jesus as the consummation of all of this. Jesus is the one who, as John's Gospel particularly shows us, honored God in a complete and perfect way. Jesus is the one who came not to do his will, but his Father's will. Jesus was the perfect Son, the new Adam who succeeded where the first Adam failed.

Passages such as Jn 14:20ff and I Jn 3:22f teach us that the new command is to love Jesus and believe in his name. Whoever does this, as I Jn 3 states, abides in Jesus and Jesus in him.

It is only in him, then that we can keep this command. As we are united to him in faith and repentance, he pays the penalty for our idolatry and gives us his perfect righteousness. Through him, we are able to truly abide in God and honor him as we should.

April 2, 2004 12:47 PM