Make God Your Model
Ten Commandments • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 6 viewsGod Calls Us to Make Him Our Model So That He Can Transform Us to Be like Him.
Notes
Transcript
First Commandment
Exodus 20:3
Our Wednesday summer sermon series this year is on the Ten Commandments. Before we start on the Commandments themselves, however, we should reflect on why they were given.
The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt for 430 years. Finally, through a burning bush on “the mountain of God” (Ex 3:1), where Moses was herding sheep, God called him to lead Israel to the Promised Land.
After nine plagues and then the death of the oldest male child in each Egyptian household, Pharaoh permitted the Israelites to leave. But then he changed his mind and chased them to the Red Sea, where God prepared safe passage for the Israelites but allowed the sea to swallow Pharaoh’s entire army. Moses led the people back to “the mountain of God” (Ex 18:5), Mount Sinai, and there God gave him the two tablets of stone on which the Ten Commandments were engraved. In this way, God made a covenant with Israel. He said, “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God” (Ex 6:7).
The real event of Sinai, therefore, was the establishment of this covenant. God promised he would care for his people, whom he had brought out of slavery in Egypt, so they could be his special people. The Ten Commandments became part of the laws that indicated how God expected his people to live. Yet, as someone has pointed out, these are the Ten Commandments, not the Ten Suggestions.
Several years ago at one of the parents nights for the confirmation classes, the topic was “The Christian Attitude toward Sexuality.” In the opening Bible study, the Sixth Commandment was presented, “You shall not commit adultery” (Ex 20:14). The parents were then asked, “Why do you think it is wrong to commit adultery?” One might expect a discussion on how harmful premarital sex is emotionally and physically. Instead, one of the parents said, “Why is it wrong? Because God said so.”
Luther begins each of his explanations to the Commandments with these words: “We should fear and love God so that we . . .” You see, if we fear and love God, we will obey him.
God Calls You His Child
God Calls You His Child
God called the Israelites and separated them from the pagan practices of their Canaanite neighbors.
God said to Israel, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (v 2).
He says to you and to me: “I am the Lord your God, who loved you so much that I sent my one and only Son. I am the Lord your God, who loves you so much that I went to the cross to pay the price for your sins. I love you so much I make you mine at your Baptism, fill you with spiritual gifts, come to you in Word and Sacrament, and keep you in the faith unto life everlasting.”
What is your response? Fear, love, and trust above all things? Do you hear and obey the First Commandment, “Have no other gods before me”? In India, different deities fulfill different purposes. If you wish to be artistic, you worship the goddess Saraswati. If you wish to succeed in business, you become a devotee of the god Ganesh. Criminals, typically, worship the black goddess of death, Kali, and warriors worship the fierce god of combat, Skanda. We worship gods like ourselves, or we become like the gods we worship.
At that time, the Israelites were tempted to worship the Baal gods—fertility gods and goddesses. The Israelites were nomadic, shepherding people before they entered the Promised Land. They had to learn to farm. From whom? From the Canaanites, of course, who were already farming the land. However, how did the Canaanites farm? Well first, in spring, before the planting, they went to the nearest Asherah pole and joined with the temple prostitutes there. That would excite the Baal gods and goddesses, who then activated the fertility of the soil.
What kind of people would the Israelites become in this land? Would they become like the Canaanite farmers, or would they be the light to the Gentiles that God intended them to be? That meant only one god—one true God. People who worship a licentious god become licentious. People taught a stern, forbidding god—whether Islamic or Christian—become stern and forbidding. People who worship the true God can become like him—loving, kind, and compassionate. Jesus said, “Your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36).
God is Calling You to Follow Him
God is Calling You to Follow Him
2. God calls us from being conformed to the world to follow him.
God says, “You shall have no other gods before me” because he wants us to become like him. Do we worship with such intensity and purpose that we become like him? That is what is supposed to happen to us as God’s children. We are called in Romans 12 “to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (v 1). Paul continues, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).
God Calls Us to Make Him Our Model So That He Can Transform Us to Be like Him.
God calls us to worship, to prayer, to the study of Scripture so that his Spirit can fill us: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5). Worship is to make us different from the world around us. Worship is hard work. It is warfare against the world, the devil, and our sinful flesh. It is a battle of God’s Spirit within us to conquer our old ways and thoughts and to fill us with his ways and thoughts. Then we will not be conform to the world. We will conform to God and show what his will is, what is “good and acceptable and perfect” for all people.
God Chose You!
God Chose You!
3. We are God’s people, not because of what we do, but because he chose us.
But then comes the real question for us worshipers.
Do we really want to become like God?
Is that why we come to his house?
Or are we here basically to use him for our purposes?
Do you pray that God will work to change you as you come into His presence?
Or do we pray that God will change everyone and everything around us?
I can’t change any of the people or situations that aggravate me, but I can let God change me. I can become like him and “approve” his will.
Who is the god you really worship, the god we fear, love, and trust above all things? Often it is ourselves. It is our will that we want done. With that objective, attending worship often is empty and pointless. We don’t want anything to happen. We don’t want to change. We want to sing the old hymns we like. We want to make sure we’re done in an hour, and less would be better.
The truth is, we do not want to fear, love, and trust in God above all things—especially not above ourselves.
Some surveys boast that 95 percent of our society believes in God. But does this truly mean they “fear, love, and trust in God above all things” (Luther’s Small Catechism, p. 11)? Not likely. Rather, I think it means that 95 percent of the people believe that God exists. It does not mean that they believe in him. It does not mean that they have no other gods before him.
Most of our society may not openly be atheists, but they certainly are practical atheists. Obedience to God is not their primary goal. They don’t want to serve him; they want him to serve them. They don’t want to be transformed, but are happy being conformed to the world. They certainly don’t want to live and act with the awareness that one day they must give an account to their Maker. Do we?
Yet God calls us his own. We are his people, not because we are better than the world around us, but because he chose us and called us.
God Transforms You in order to Change the World
God Transforms You in order to Change the World
4. He transforms us with his Spirit to transform people in the world.
Why? Not because of us. Not because of you and not because of me, but because of Him. God is love. Thank God that he is.
He didn’t leave his people, the Israelites, when they chased after other gods in Canaan.
He doesn’t leave you when you chase after contemporary gods—when you forget about him all summer, in favor of your outdoor activities or cabin in the woods.
He remembers and serves and protects and upholds you each and day.
God does not forget his children, and He rejoices when we repent enabling Him to forgive and restore and renew even the pain and shame of the cross. That is his nature.
He looks to me and you to spread that nature. It is good that you are here this warm evening, for God is calling you into His holy presence that He might fill you with his Spirit and send you out as his transformed, transforming people.
Will you fear, love, and trust in God above all, and so be conformed to his image?
Will you be different from the world around you?
Worship him “in the splendor of holiness” (Ps 96:9), and you will be “precious in [his] eyes, and honored” (Is 43:4). You will be the joyful fulfillment of the prayer he taught us: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt 6:10).
Have no other gods before him. He has no other joy before you.
In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen