Transcript
You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant, whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am God. Before me no God was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the Lord, and beside me there is no Savior. Come, let us worship God.
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Listen now to the reading of God's word from the 19th Psalm. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord
are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is thy servant warned. In keeping them there is great reward. But who can discern his errors? Clear thou me from hidden faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression. Let the words
of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Let the good news come now. Our Father, not only in word but in power, in the Holy Spirit, and with full assurance, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. If there is a title to this series of chapel sermons on the Ten Commandments, it would be the Gospel
in the Law. Listen now to the good news as it comes to us from the First Commandment as recorded in the 20th chapter of Exodus. 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 bondage. You shall have no other gods besides me. What redemptive difference does the Ten Commandments in general and the First Commandment in particular make in human
life? What is the good news in the First Commandment? Let me suggest the answer by way of three examples. The first comes from the Quaker philosopher Elton Trueblood. Shortly after the Second World War, Trueblood wrote a book entitled Foundations for Reconstruction, primarily a proposal for the future of Europe. It nevertheless included an analysis of the recent past. He tells the story of how Hitler came to power, how he made absolute claims for the power of the
state, and how one by one the institutions of German society capitulated to his vision. The newspapers silenced their criticism. The business community and the labor unions gave in out of self-interest. The universities went silent and took up the party line. Only a few Christians and a few Jews offered continuing resistance, and they did so at risk to their own lives. What did they have, asked Trueblood, that the others did not have? His answer is, they
had the First Commandment. The second example comes from the historians of modern science. They call attention to a strange historical fact. Although science and technology are now recognized and employed all over the globe, they are the gifts to the world of Western culture. They did not emerge out of the East. They did not arise out of what today we call the Third World. They have their origin in the culture of the West. And why it happened
this way seems clear. Modern science and technology are the children of the Judeo-Christian tradition. They are predicated upon two convictions that have a common religious origin. One is the conviction, as Einstein put it, that the world is rational. And the other is the belief that the universe is not divine. And both stem from the faith of the Bible that the world is the creation of God. Because it is a creation rather than a chaos, the
world is rational, even in its chaotic dimensions. And because it is a creation, it is not itself divine. Now biblical scholars agree that the Genesis account of creation is the product of Israel's faith in the one God. Although the story of creation is told first in the Bible, it represents an insight derived from Israel's prior experience of God's redemption. Only later did they recognize that the God who had brought them out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage, the God who had said to them, You shall have no other gods before me, is the God who is the creator of the universe. So if we ask what the Western world had that encouraged the rise of modern science, the answer is the First Commandment. The third example is provided by Britta Stendahl in her book, The Ten Commandments in a New Day. In the opening chapter, she tells of her own
personal and spiritual growth as a Christian woman. She perceives that the feminist movement is motivated more by the desire of women for wholeness and fulfillment than it is by the quest for mere equality with men. One of the ways in which the desire of women has been frustrated in our culture, she says, is the piety which emphasizes the difference between men and women. She puts it this way, while women knew of their immense dependence on men
and wanted that relationship to be addressed and redressed with mutual honesty, equality, and respect, men enjoyed and took for granted their superiority and independence. The more fragile their situation became with the emancipation of women, the more men felt threatened and the harder they tried to emphasize and to spiritualize the differences between the male and the female. But this, she points out, is a form of piety which the First Commandment prohibits. For it prohibits a man from
making an idol of his masculinity, even as it prohibits a woman from making an idol of her femininity. Now, as diverse as these three examples may be, they all have a common theme. Each in its own way bears witness to the difference the First Commandment makes in human life. Each proclaims the good news in the commandment. And that difference is freedom. Freedom. The First Commandment is a liberating word that offers us freedom from the bondage imposed
upon us by our worship and service of the absolute state, the forces of the universe, and our own sexual being, to name but a few of the other gods we serve. That is how ancient Israel heard the First Commandment. It heard it as a word of freedom and that is how we can hear it today. Consider the words which introduced the First Commandment. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of
Egypt and out of the house of bondage. Now, in our Reformed theological tradition, the interpretation of the Ten Commandments, this verse serves as a prelude to all of the commandments. But in the rabbinical tradition of the Jewish community, it is understood as a part of the First Commandment. On this reading of the text, the full First Commandment is, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house
of bondage. You shall have no other gods beside me. The advantage of this interpretation of the text is that it clearly identifies who the me is. The me in the commandment is the God who delivered Israel from slavery to the Egyptians through Moses and by the Exodus. The God who declared himself to be number one, who claims Israel's exclusive loyalty, is the God who liberates Israel for the worship and the service of God alone. Now, the
story of the Exodus, you see, is not finished according to this interpretation of the commandment until God leads the children of Israel through the Red Sea, destroys the pursuing armies of the Pharaoh, and then through Moses gives them the First Commandment. Their full liberation comes when they hear, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods beside me. Their
deliverance from Egypt was political and economic, yes, but their spiritual liberation came with the full First Commandment. Let me explain why this is so. In his book, Ten Words of Freedom, Professor J. Williams calls attention to the strange fact that the Hebrew word for God and other gods in the text of the First Commandment is the same. If we read the text with the Hebrew word untranslated, it goes like this, I am the Lord your Elohim,
you shall have no other Elohim before me. Now, this word Elohim is a plural noun that is delivered, derived from the Canaanite term ale, the root meaning of which is power. The sense of the plural form then is powers. What the First Commandment intends to say then is this, I am the Lord your power, you shall have no other powers beside me. But what powers are we talking about? Dr. Williams answers that we are talking about
the variety of powers which affect human life, the powers which actually exert influence over the lives of human beings. In human history, these powers were initially identified with the forces of nature. People worshiped the power of the sun and the power of the wind and the power of the rain. They served the powers of sexuality and fertility and reproduction. Then, as happened in ancient Greece, the nature gods gave way to the culture gods. People worshiped the
powers of virtue, the power of truth, the power of justice. They served the gods of war and of state and of commerce. Today, we moderns are prone to put down the ancients for their polytheism, their belief in many gods. We smile at their naivete in mythologizing the powers of the universe and mythologizing the powers of human culture and viewing them as divine. We are smug in our monotheism, our belief in one god, or in our agnosticism,
our doubt about any god, or in our atheism, our belief in no god. But our smugness begs the question. For who can deny that such powers still confront us? Who can argue that his or her life is not impacted by such powers? And who can doubt that we are as tempted as the ancients to come to terms with these powers on their terms, to venerate them, and even to seek and curry their favor? The truth of
the matter is that our modern secular world may be filled with theoretical agnostics and atheists, but it is equally filled with practicing polytheists. I am convinced that it is precisely this practical polytheism that is the cause of the fragmentation of human life that we are experiencing in our modern culture. For the powers confront us just as they did the ancients, not as one, but as many. And the powers appear to be in conflict with each other
as well as with us. Each of them demands our allegiance. Each of them wants our service. And we are torn apart as we struggle to survive. In a polytheistic world, life is always a struggle. Such a world offers us no moral or social or personal unity. The result for many is disillusionment with life. Life simply makes no sense, and so people flee for release where they can find it. According to Dr. Williams, many find it in
drugs. The rapid growth of drugs in the 20th century, he says, reflects modern secular people's disillusionment with contemporary forms of what is actually polytheism and the yearning to escape the struggle. But there is no escape. We cannot escape the powers any more than we can escape from our own shadow. We cannot escape from the power of the economy. We cannot escape from the power of the state. We cannot escape from the power of our sexuality. But
we can be liberated from their tyranny. And that is what Israel experienced in the Exodus from Egypt. God delivered them from slavery to Ramses II. And through Moses, he led them out of the house of political and economic bondage. But in giving Israel the first commandment, God liberated them in a much more profound way. He freed them from the tyranny of their service to the powers. The first commandment liberates us in the same way. Although we
must live in an economic order, we need not worship money. Although we must live in a political order, we need not worship the state. Although we must live as sexual beings, we need not worship sex. The first commandment frees us to focus our lives on the God who transcends the powers of the universe and the powers of human culture. The first commandment frees us to find the meaning of our lives not in the powers, but in
the God who is the creator of the powers. The first commandment frees us to experience the love of God who redeems us and who redeems the whole world in Jesus Christ. When asked, which is the great commandment in the law, Jesus answered, You shall love the Lord your God, the Lord your power, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And at a minimum that means you shall have no other
powers before this God. Now our keeping of the first commandment is not an easy task. The ensuing history of Israel is the story of a continuing struggle to keep life focused on the living God. It was a constant struggle against idolatry. And we know the struggle from our own life experience as Christians as well. We all say God is number one. But Luther said, ask yourself what's number two. And then you'll know where the competition's coming
from. But the choice is ever before us as it was with Israel. As my friend Arthur Sulz puts it in his book, New Directions from the Ten Commandments, Our choice is always we either have the God who made us or the gods we make. And as Ernst Käsemann reminds us, we are always determined by the gods we serve. The first commandment is a gospel word. It is good news. You need not worship the powers because there
is the power beyond the powers who created us, who redeems us, and who claims our ultimate allegiance. Let us pray. Grant us openness and wisdom, O Lord, to hear in the commandment to Israel the good news of our own liberation from our worship of all that is less than you. Enable us to be freed. Make us men and women who enjoy our being as men and women. Make us people who can be productive in an economy.
Make us people who can be servants of the state with statesmanship, but without ultimate commitment. Free us to be people who live in freedom within the world and its structures that you have created, but always looking beyond the world, always looking beyond the structures and the orders to find our source and our redemption in you alone. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.
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And now go in peace and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
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