Lesson 2 First Commandment

[0:00] What we're going to do is we're going to take a look at the first commandment. And here's the first commandment, right? It says, you shall have no other gods before me.

[0:14] You shall have no other gods before me. And what I want to do is I want to look at this in a couple of ways. One, I want to look at the background behind this. I mean, this is what God is saying, but why is God saying this?

[0:28] Why is this a command that he's giving to us? And this will be pretty quick. I think it's for two big reasons. One is because he's greater than the Egyptian gods, right?

[0:41] He's greater than the Egyptian gods. He's the one who set his people free from the Egyptian gods. And much like some sort of hidden issue, say, in the body or some other kind of thing.

[0:57] Like I think about the idea of if you have a glass of water and you have a glass of bleach, when you just look at them, they look similar. And if you drink the wrong thing, that could be dangerous.

[1:09] And that's that hidden danger that we don't often see. Well, God set his people free from slavery. But he also set them free from a hidden danger of the Egyptian gods.

[1:21] And I don't know if I told you about this, but one of the things that you have is that each one of these plagues was sort of aimed at the gods of Egypt. Okay? So, is that, can everybody see that?

[1:34] Can you see that? Okay. So, you've got like Isis was the goddess of the Nile, right? So, when the Nile turns blood, it's like God killed her, right? You've got the gnats.

[1:45] So, Set was the god of desert storms. And the gnats were coming out of the sand there. Or flies, you know, covering up the sun. So, the sun god gets kind of covered over.

[1:58] Or the death of a livestock. You've got a couple of gods that, you know, have cow symbols as a part of their thing. The boils. Or the hail.

[2:09] Or the locusts. You can see all these different gods that that might have been connected to. The darkness, obviously wrong. You know, the sun's not shining.

[2:20] And the death of the firstborn. I mean, Isis is supposed to protect the children. And the Pharaoh's firstborn son's considered a god. And yet, God takes them. Now, that may sound like a stretch.

[2:32] Because, you know, we're taking and looking at, you know, Egypt's history. And we're looking at these things. But God purposefully went after the gods of Egypt. You can see that in three passages.

[2:44] In Exodus chapter 12, verse 12. He says, For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night. And I will strike down all the firstborn of the land of Egypt. Both of men and beasts.

[2:54] And against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment. Against the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment. He says the same thing when we get into numbers.

[3:08] Verse 3 talks about how they journeyed in the Passover. And how they went out in the sight of the Egyptians. And verse 4 says that while the Egyptians were bearing their firstborn, whom the Lord had struck down to them.

[3:21] And then the Lord had also executed judgment on their gods. Then in the book of Ezekiel. Okay, now Ezekiel was a prophet at the same time as Daniel. And Ezekiel was in Babylon.

[3:34] But God uses the Exodus in Ezekiel's mind. And here's what he says in verse 6 and 7. So he's saying, listen, they had a problem with their gods, with their idols.

[4:03] I wanted you to have nothing to do with that, which is why I destroyed it. It was the hidden danger. The gods and the idols of Egypt was the hidden danger. And because God is greater than all of them, he can command, have no other gods before me.

[4:19] But it's not just the gods of Egypt. Because every society had some kind of god, right? Every society had some sort of polytheistic sort of view.

[4:31] Well, Psalm 86, 8. There's no one like you among the gods. Right? Or Psalm 97, 9. For you are the Lord most high over all the earth.

[4:41] You're exalted far above all gods. Psalm 95, 3. For the Lord is a great God and a great king above all gods. So what we know is that in every culture, they developed their own religion.

[4:58] They developed their own gods who were no gods at all. It was just a figment of their imagination. But yet they ascribe divinity to the things of nature in order to try to say, well, this is our God.

[5:14] And what God is saying is, listen, I'm the only God you should worship. There have no other gods before me. Because he's greater than the Egyptian gods.

[5:25] He's greater than all gods. And so that's what he's saying to us. So when we come back to this command, you shall have no other gods before me. We need to look at it this way as well.

[5:37] We need to look at it as case law. Does everybody understand the term case law? So case law means this idea that we set a standard and from that we extrapolate out different circumstances.

[5:56] So in our country, we're built on case law. So if you go look at the books and say, where is the law about murder? Murder one, right?

[6:08] Where there's malice aforethought, right? And there's planned out murder. Well, it doesn't list out by gun, by knife, by poison, by vehicle, by, you know what I'm saying?

[6:21] It doesn't list out all the possible ways that you could kill someone and say, it's wrong for you to kill someone with a gun. It's wrong for you to kill somebody with a lead pipe. It's wrong for you to kill somebody with a candlestick in the ballroom with Mr. Plum, right?

[6:35] It doesn't list it out that way. It just says, don't murder. And it covers all of those cases. That's what case law is. So we don't have to say, have no other gods before me.

[6:49] Oh, but listen, the thing that is in my life, that's not really a god. Because when we start talking about idols here in a second, it's going to be easy to think to ourselves, well, maybe this doesn't cover it.

[7:03] Maybe it's okay if I have this in my life. But in truth, it's not. Here's the other thing, the way that this case law works. It's the idea also that there's a positive and a negative.

[7:16] Right? There's a positive and a negative. With a negative comes a positive. Now, the negative of this commandment is, you shall have no other gods before me.

[7:27] So don't do that. That's the negative. There's a don't, don't, don't. That's the wagging finger. It says stop, stop, stop. Right? But this kind of has a positive to it.

[7:39] Let's think about it this way. You told your kids, you told your kids, do not chew with your mouth open. What did you want them to do instead?

[7:50] Eat with your mouth closed. And why did you want them to eat with their mouth closed? Why? Yes. Because of smacking. Because of smacking noises.

[8:00] Food might come out. And food might come out of their mouth. So what you wanted is you wanted them to eat without making terrible sounds and without getting food everywhere.

[8:13] That's what you positively wanted by commanding something negative. Right? Or what about this? What if you said, don't slam the door?

[8:26] What did you positively want? Close the door. Be quiet. Okay. You wanted them to close it easily, but you wanted them to close it easy because you want the quiet.

[8:39] Don't damage the door. Don't damage the door. There you go. Do you see what I'm saying? That inside of a negative command comes a very positive kind of issue. So with this one, what do you think God is after?

[8:59] That's right. I'm it. I'm the only God. Worship me and me alone. Well, that brings our problem front and center.

[9:13] We have a problem as humans. And that is that we still worship idols. An idol does not have to be a little gold statue.

[9:27] And an idol doesn't have to be a TV or anything physical. An idol could be an idea. All right. So let's, let's, let's, let's, let's get into this part and read from Romans chapter one.

[9:42] We're going to read Romans chapter one, verse 18 through 25. I'm going to ask you a few questions about this passage after I read it. It says this for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

[9:59] Because that, because that which is known about God is evident within them for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse.

[10:25] For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.

[10:39] Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image of a form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

[10:52] Therefore, God gave them over to the lust of their hearts to impurity so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

[11:13] Amen. Now that, that is a great passage with so much in it. But let's, let's, let's ask a few questions of the passage.

[11:24] So what was it that he said showed that God existed? What was it that he showed that God existed?

[11:36] Matter of fact, I'll go back to the, um, to the verse. What was it that showed? Creation of the world. Creation. That's right. Creation shows that God exists.

[11:50] As a matter of fact, he says that it has been, um, clearly. Yeah, there we go. They have this, this stuff about God is clearly seen being understood through what has been made.

[12:04] It's not, it's not confused. It's not stuttering. It's clear. Okay. Now, what excuse do men have for not believing that God exists?

[12:21] None. They never said it. There's no excuse. He says that they're without excuse. So here's, here's this word excuse. The word excuse means apology.

[12:33] Okay. So now in our day and age, when we say the word apology, we mean, I'm sorry. But long time ago, this word meant to give a defense.

[12:45] So if you tell me that driving a Chevy truck is the best thing, and then you say, here's my reasons why you should drive a Chevy truck. Then you've just given an apology for driving Chevy trucks, right?

[13:00] You've defended that. You've proven that, right? So what he's saying is that God has shown himself and they have no defense as to why they don't believe him.

[13:13] So on the day of judgment, when an atheist stands before God, the atheist might try to say, but I didn't know that you were there.

[13:24] And God's going to say, you have no defense. You have no excuse. So, so we have this witness of creation.

[13:36] So nobody has any excuse, but the question is, so then what do they do with this witness? What is it they do with the truth of this witness?

[13:48] And it's right here in this first verse. His wrath. So his wrath is revealed. Then suppress the truth.

[14:01] Yeah, there we go. Okay. Okay. So, so here's the way, here's the logic of the thought that's in the passage. God made the world and his fingerprints are all over it.

[14:12] And when you look at creation, you know that he's there. The truth of that though, gets suppressed in or by unrighteousness.

[14:24] So the more sinful things that I do, the more that I stamp down that. So you know what this word suppress means, right? It's what you did to your little brother in the swimming pool.

[14:37] You hold him down underneath the water, right? That's, that's what this is. Lost people take and they hold down the truth by their unrighteousness so that they can say, I don't believe that God exists.

[14:57] Wow. And so, so what's the results of this? That's the question is what are the results of it? What happens to their hearts, right? He says right here.

[15:08] What happens to their hearts? Darken. Foolish. Their foolish heart is darkened.

[15:19] And when their foolish heart becomes darkened, then what do they do with the worship of God? They exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for a four-footed animal?

[15:33] For a crawling thing? Can you just imagine for just a second that there is such a God as Baal? And just imagine for a second that this God is not all-powerful, but is represented to us by a bull.

[15:50] You know what I'm saying? Like even if there was some sort of power behind it, God is the one who has created all things.

[16:02] But there's no power behind it. It's just an idol. And yet, how many times, think about what the Israelites did, right? They get this truth from God and then they gather up their gold and make a little golden calf and worship it.

[16:19] And it's like, how could you be so foolish? That's what we would say. And yet, what God is saying is that all of us are this way. All of us are this way.

[16:33] God's people, they even said... Yeah, let me go back, woman. They had said, right before they get the law, so this is Exodus 19, the law comes in Exodus 20.

[16:45] All that the Lord has spoken will do. We're going to do it. Chapter 20, they get the law. Chapter 34, they build their golden statue.

[16:58] They know the law. They know the truth. They commit themselves to doing it, but they can't. They don't. Right? That is the idolatry of the heart.

[17:14] And I want us to illustrate this idolatry for a second, because I think it's important for us to see that idolatry is not about a statue or a physical object.

[17:27] Sometimes it can just be a concept. And I want us to turn to Genesis. In Genesis chapter 29, Jacob had a brother.

[17:40] Anybody know who Jacob's brother was? Esau. Esau. Okay? So Jacob takes off away from his brother Esau because he stole his blessing. And he goes to his family's former land, and he wants to go find a wife.

[17:57] Now, he meets the first girl that he wants to marry. Does anybody know her name? Rachel. So he wants to marry Rachel. So he agrees to work for seven years for Rachel.

[18:11] But what happens on the wedding night? He doesn't get Rachel. Who does he get instead? Leah. He gets Leah. That's right. Now, does he love Leah? No.

[18:22] No, not really. So he wants Rachel. So what does he have to do? Work another seven years. So he ends up marrying two women, which, by the way, is a violation of God's law. Okay?

[18:33] God doesn't approve of this, but God uses it. Does that make sense? Okay? So here we are with Leah unloved. And let's just see how this story unfolds.

[18:45] Now, the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, and he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. Leah conceived and bore a son and named him Reuben, for she said, because the Lord has seen my affliction, surely now my husband will love me.

[19:04] Then she conceived again and bore a son and said, because the Lord has heard that I am unloved, he has therefore given me this son also. So she named him Simeon.

[19:15] She conceived again and bore a son and said, now this time my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons. Therefore, he was named Levi.

[19:28] And she conceived again and bore a son and said, this time I will praise the Lord. Therefore, she named him Judah. Then she stopped bearing.

[19:40] Now, I think it's significant that the name here, Judah, is now I will praise the Lord, and it's not about her and her husband. But that's a Jesus foreshadowing thing that we're not talking about today.

[19:51] So that's when I hit a rabbit. Sorry about that. Okay. So she's born four sons. But what about Rachel? Now, when Rachel saw.

[20:03] Do what? I can imagine Rachel. Really? Four? Four. I know. Right? And here's what she says. She saw that she bore Jacob no children, and she became jealous of her sister.

[20:16] And she said to Jacob, give me children or else I die. What did Rachel want?

[20:32] She wanted children. How much did she want it? Very much. To the place of becoming jealous and wanting to die.

[20:43] So is there anything wrong with wanting children? No. No. So was Rachel's, what was her heart condition then?

[20:56] I know. She was jealous. Sinful. This was an idol for her. It was something good.

[21:10] It's something good to want children. But she wanted it too much. She was willing to be jealous. Okay. Which commandment does that break?

[21:21] Jealousy. Covet. She was coveting. And because she's coveting, and she can't have what she wants, she would rather die.

[21:35] That's breaking the sixth commandment. So she's willing to break commandments in order to get what she wants. That's how bad she wants it. That means it's an idol.

[21:48] That means it's an idol. Paul David Tripp is a guy that I like to read. He says this, There is nothing wrong with the object of our desire, but with the status of our desire.

[22:00] And it is not what we want, but that we want it too much. Our desires seize the throne of our hearts. That desire grabs a hold and gets a hold of the throne and begins to tell us what to do.

[22:19] Had the commandments been given yet at this time in nature's life? They had not. However, because the commandments represent the summary of the moral law of God, these things are written on the heart.

[22:34] Not in the sense of down on stone, but they're written on the heart. So in other words, she knew it was wrong, even though it wasn't written down.

[22:45] It's kind of like in Romans 2, where Paul talks about Gentiles who didn't even have a copy of the written law, but they did what the law required. And it's because the law is written on the heart.

[22:57] So, yeah, but that's a great question. I really appreciate that question. Because that would, you know, like if she's not obligated, then maybe it's not a...

[23:08] If you don't see it, you don't have to blame her. Right, right. Maybe it's not a sin if I don't know about it. And that's the reason that all people are sinners. Even somebody who's never heard about Jesus, even somebody who lives someplace where they've never seen the Bible, they've never read the Bible, they're still guilty for their sin because the law of God is written on the heart.

[23:28] And that's how that works. But that's an excellent question. Excellent question. Okay, so let's see how this turns out. Genesis 30, verse 22, Then God remembered Rachel and gave heed to her and opened her wound.

[23:46] Okay, so that's a massive kindness from God, right? She didn't deserve it. She was sinning. She treated this thing as an idol. And yet God gave her a child anyway.

[23:58] So you would think, Well, if I have this child, I've gotten what I want. I'm going to be okay now, right? So she conceived and bore a son and said, God has taken away my reproach.

[24:13] She named him Joseph, saying, May the Lord give me another son. Okay, so Joseph's name means another one.

[24:25] So it didn't satisfy that thing, right? It's still there. It's still alive and well.

[24:37] And we can tell that there's an idol there because when we desire something, and when that desire controls our behavior, when that desire controls our emotions, then it's an idol and it rules us and not God.

[24:52] You know, this is, you skipped the part in there where she gave him the housekeeper, and the housekeeper had two sons, and that still wasn't enough.

[25:04] Yeah, true. And he's already got adultery going because he's married these two girls, and now he's sleeping with the housekeeper. And he's like, Who makes this stuff up? I know. It's crazy.

[25:15] And, you know, you're right. I could have gone there, and that would have just added to the case. It's terrible. That's the perfect example, though, to think about that, like, how do I know this is an idol in my heart?

[25:28] Well, what are you willing to do to get it? You know, maybe you're not willing to physically do the thing that you would be willing to do to get it because you're like, Okay, I'm not going to murder somebody to get this.

[25:41] But you might be willing to be angry enough in your mind, right, with murderous anger, and that would be the same thing, wouldn't it?

[25:55] So it's interesting to me that this doesn't have to be a golden statue. This doesn't have to be a television or a bank account full of money. This is motherhood.

[26:08] This is motherhood that she's after. She's after the blessing of being able to say, Listen, I've got God's blessing on my life. Because that was one of the things in that culture, is that if you had children, then you were blessed.

[26:21] You know? And so she's wanting this idea of this motherhood, of this blessing, and she wants it so much. It's not wrong to want children. That's the thing about this that's so insidious.

[26:33] Because what happens is that what's in our heart takes something that's good and messes it up. Messes it up.

[26:44] And you really wonder how thankful she was for the first. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Selfish. And, you know, we could talk about later in her life, and to get a glimpse of the kind of woman she is, because when Jacob leaves from Laban and takes his two wives, or I guess four wives and all these children and leaves, she stills her father's idols in order to take them with her.

[27:20] That doesn't sound like somebody who's committed to God Almighty. You know? So here's what I want us to do. I want us to make some application of this, to kind of think about, okay, we know the commandment.

[27:33] Have no other gods before me, which means we can't have any of these idols in our heart, because we need to worship the one true God. And I said that God's law works like a map, a mirror, and a light.

[27:45] So I just want to kind of lay out for you how it would work as a map first. And that is this, that you and I, as Christians, who've been bought with the blood of Christ, still struggle with idolatry.

[28:00] We still struggle with idolatry. As a matter of fact, John, who wrote the Gospel of John in 1, 2, 3 John, in the book of Revelation, in his first epistle to the church, to Christians that he's writing to, he tells these Christians, guard yourselves from idols.

[28:19] So we still, as Christians, struggle with idolatry. And so here's what I want to give you. On your paper, I've given you six questions that can help us identify perhaps an idol of our own heart so that we can get rid of it.

[28:37] So here's the six questions. Number one, what are you disappointed with? What are you disappointed with? Now, what I'm not saying is that any disappointment is an idol, but I am saying that any disappointment ought to be a trigger that says, wait a minute, do I have an idol?

[28:56] Does that make sense? Because disappointment is a sadness or a frustration about something, and that could be an okay thing, but it might be too much so.

[29:07] It might be too much so. Think about this. Kids coming home with bad grades, and you're disappointed in their bad grades. Now, that could be an okay disappointment, disappointment, but it could also be an idolatrous disappointment.

[29:26] It depends on how high it rises. Does it control your behavior? Does it control your emotions? Is it built upon your reputation as a parent rather than upon their initiation and reputation as a child?

[29:43] So what are you disappointed with? Second question, what do you make time and financial sacrifices for? And by this, I'm not talking about things that are forced upon you, right?

[29:55] If you have a job that is a such thing and that sacrifice is forced upon you, that's different from what you're willing to sacrifice time and money for.

[30:07] And it doesn't mean that things you spend money on are your idols, but it is a thing that says it could be. How much do I want it?

[30:17] What would I do if somebody took it away from me? What would be my behavior? How about my emotions? Are my emotions controlled by the use of my money and my time?

[30:31] What do you worry about? Worry is a little bit like disappointment because worry is a kind of fear and anxiety. We know we're told in the Bible not to worry, so what do we mean by this?

[30:43] Well, it's really a fear, right? There is a kind of fear that's a good fear, right? There's the fear of the Lord that's a good fear. If I'm about to step on a rattlesnake and I, in fear, jump back, that's a good fear that protects me, but sometimes our fears run amok and begin to get into a place of idolatry.

[31:13] The, back, I guess it was 2016, there was a pastor who in California was afraid to lose the relationship with his son and when his son came out to him that, you know, dad, I'm gay, this pastor father goes through and basically restudies the Bible and reinterprets every passage that would have said that homosexuality was a sin and reinterpreted it to say, no, that's not, that's not about my son because he was afraid to lose his son.

[31:49] He didn't have to do that to not lose his son. He could have just loved his son and held to his beliefs but that fear caused him to change his values and his beliefs and like anything that's going to cause you to change your values and beliefs, that's a, that's a pretty big red flag that means we need to examine this and see what's going on.

[32:10] What do you dream of? What do you dream of? You know, dreaming for something is not a bad thing. Dreaming for a, you know, a great family Christmas, you know, and I want this great family Christmas to come about and so you invite everybody to come and you want it but like, what happens if it doesn't happen?

[32:33] You know, you're going to be like Rachel and be like, if they don't all come for Christmas, I'm just going to die. You know what I'm saying? Like it comes, it gets too high in the heart. You know, what do we dream of?

[32:44] What do we want? It's not wrong to want things. It's, it's wrong for them to control us. Number five, where do you run for comfort? Where do you run for comfort?

[32:57] You know, some people run to some form of substance for comfort and we could easily have begun to identify, well, you know, you have drugs and alcohol, that kind of thing but there's also, you know, chocolate cake and, you know, pizza, fudge, fudge, ice cream, you know.

[33:18] There's, there's even the idea of not just a substance but even an activity. It's like, you know, well, when that happens to me, I don't, I don't have any problem with substance. It's like, no, but you're a workaholic.

[33:29] You're just, you're going way beyond, you know. Where do you run for comfort? These addictions, that's how I think addictions start is that we're looking to it for something that we need and I would say that all idolatry is actually a form of addiction because the thing we want controls our behavior.

[33:54] Right? So the alcoholic who's been struggling for years and now they're trying to get rid of it. I mean, there ought to be not only an AA but there ought to be a CA, you know, child, loving my child anonymous, you know, because I've made my children my idol and their behavior has controlled my behavior and because of my reputation and whatever, you know.

[34:17] So there's, there's all kinds of ways that that could work out. The sixth one is whose applause do you long for? Whose applause do you long for? Sometimes it's the approval from a particular person and you know, the Bible calls this sort of thing, I've got to have their approval and therefore I'm going to change myself to get that approval.

[34:38] The Bible calls that the fear of man. The fear of man and as somebody who has grown up being a people pleaser, that's a hard thing sometimes to live with because I do want the applause of people and I want people to think well of me.

[34:52] you know, I fight that by saying, I don't care what anybody says. It doesn't always work that way. But you know, this is something that can be in marriage a lot, right?

[35:05] Marriage can be this way because we can think, we can have an incident that happens in the marriage, we can have some sort of rift because of a fight or disagreement or you know, an unkind word or a harsh word even and as we tell that to friends around us, friends around us will speak what the world speaks to us which is an idolatrous thing that says, well, you deserve to be happy and it's like, well, actually I deserve nothing but death and hell but okay.

[35:38] So, that desire to be happy, it's like, well, should they treat you badly? No, they shouldn't treat you badly. Should you want to be treated badly? No, you shouldn't want to be treated badly but if you want your spouse to treat you in a certain way and that desire rises too high in the heart, then it becomes an idolatrous thing that I want from my spouse and when my spouse doesn't give it to me, then I get angry and then I compound the problem because in that anger now, everything that they do, I'm interpreting in light of that anger.

[36:17] And so, as we look at this first commandment, have no other gods before me, it's not just talking about little statues, it's talking about what's going on in our hearts.

[36:28] And that brings us to thinking about this commandment as a mirror. As a mirror, we look at ourselves and as a map, okay, I've shown you some things to look at but now, after you've seen those things, it becomes like a mirror because you're looking at your own heart with these questions and you're kind of going like, wow, I really messed this up.

[36:47] And Paul tells us that the law is a tutor that leads us to Christ. And that's the next thing that we need to say is that Jesus died for people like you and me who make idols out of ice cream, motherhood, relaxation, and retirement.

[37:06] He died for people like us. That's why he went to the cross, because he went to the cross to pay for our idolatry. another way to think about this is in a positive way, using this commandment to help someone see something about the gospel and about what it means to be committed to Christ.

[37:27] And there's a girl that her family asked me to come see them. This is my first pastor. daughter, she's about 10, 11 years old, and I'm sharing the gospel with her because I have a little drawing that I use to draw for kids whenever I'm sharing the gospel with them.

[37:41] And actually, I use it for a lot of people, but that's there. Anyway, so I got through talking about sin and what Christ had done, and I was in this section talking about what does it mean to believe.

[37:57] And it's three things. It's know the facts. It's believe they're true. And then you entrust your life to Christ. That's a part of that faith and that believing. And I said, that means you've got to let go of everything else that's important to you and hold on to Christ, right?

[38:10] So I used this particular law, have no other gods before me, and I put her parents as that possible God. And I said, do you want, if Jesus said to you, you got to give up your parents, would you still want to trust them?

[38:28] And she was silent for a good while, and she says, yes. And that's the point at which I knew she was being thoughtful, and she was really considering this. And I said, you know, Jesus is not asking you to throw your parents away and move out of their house, but if you don't have a heart that says, I want Jesus more than, then is that really faith?

[38:49] And so it's a good thing to kind of keep these things in focus because again, again, like even in parenting, even in parenting, bringing such a law to our kids, you know, I'm not, I can't tell you that the way that we're doing things works, like it produces results.

[39:08] What I'm saying is I think this is the right way regardless of the results. You have to bring the law to bear upon them, and pointing out the idolatry in our kids' hearts was the way that I got into the gospel with my kids more times than I can tell.

[39:23] The final thing is to think about this law as a light, and as a light, it ought to display the character of God, right? So if we see him say, have no other gods before me, then this law should encourage us to think about God's greatness, right?

[39:40] That he's above all gods. So just imagine this, just imagine that there were other gods, and yet he's above all of them, and he's to be worshipped above all of them, and he's destroyed the Egyptian gods.

[39:53] Like, I mean, what kind of gods are they that can be destroyed? And what kind of God is this? He's great. He is glorious. I mean, there is no greater joy in life than God himself.

[40:08] Stack up all the good news you could ever hear. Stack up all the joys you've ever had in your life, and then mix it all up with all of our joys, and none of it can compare to the joy of who God is.

[40:24] When we look at tornadoes, when we look at earthquakes, when we look at snowstorms, when we look at the beating of hummingbird wings, those are all just doorways to begin to think about the greatness of God.

[40:41] And so this law, have no other gods before me, ought to push us that way. And so my prayer is, as we go through this, and you think about this, and you go away today, and you'll think about this law, you know, when we go back and we practice, and I do this, you'll go like, yeah, I need to make sure I don't have any idols in my heart, and I need to make sure that I'm really looking for God's greatness in everything.

[41:10] And that's my prayer, is that just like that, you'll just go immediately, boom. You're just going to walk around church going, like that. All right, let's pray.