Last Sunday at our Christingle service we thought about the uncertainty of the coming year- we dont know what might happen to us or our family or our society- and I used the illustration of going for a walk in the country with our family on a dark night and then getting separated from the others. And we saw how important it is firstly for us to stick together and then for each of us to be carrying our own torch with a fully charged battery ie that we need to be there for each other other as brothers and sisters in Christ, and we need to recharge our spiritual batteries every day by feeding on the Word of God as we read the Bible.

But of course many people today publicly ridicule the Word of God- which is why so few people read it. They have heard someone say on telly that its all made up stories, so they dont bother reading it, and then they feel they can criticise it without actually studying it- which is not a  very honest approach.

And this pressure from the media, and ridicule from friends at work, can make us as Christians wonder whether we really can take the Bible seriously; it can make us lose confidence in the Bible, in Jesus and particularly in the OT. Some people say ‘well I am happy with the God of love in the NT but I dont like the God of judgement in the OT’. And over the last 2 years I have given a series of sermons defending the teaching of the Bible against some of these objections- and they are all still on our church website- which I encourage you to explore. www.stgeorgesbarnsley.co.uk.

For the first 3 months  of this new year I want to think about morality, and how the Bible's moral teaching stands up to the pressures of modern society. Can we live a good life without reference to God? Ie Would an atheist Britain be a great Britain? or do we need a moral code based on God's revelation for society to prosper, and for us as individuals to live a fulfilled life?

So we are going to look for the next 3 months up to Easter at the 10 Commandments- and what relevance they have for our society and for us as individuals. Are they outdated, primitive or just as relevant as ever? Or were they only for the Jews and not for us?

So there will be 10 sermons on the 10 Commandments up to Easter, but we only have time for 8 of them on Sundays; so 2 of them will be on Thursdays- including this coming Thursday- but they will all be recorded on the website so you can listen to or read them on there any time.

 

So today we are looking at the first commandment. But what is the first commandment?...

There are 2 answers to that question, so its a bit confusing. And it depends on what you mean by 1^st.  One answer is that its the 1^st of the 10 Commandments, and the other answer is that its the most important commandment which isn't even in the 10 Commandments.

So this morning let's look at both. And in doing so, we will see very clearly how the NT and OT teachings fit together. So we start with what Jesus said was the first or most important commandment in Mark 12.

Mark 12:28  One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" – or the original Greek says ‘which is the first commandment?

And Jesus replies by quoting Deut 6:4-5.

29 "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: `Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'

So this commandment is not in the 10 Commandments but it was recited every day by pious Jews and was known as the Shema, which is the Hebrew for hear. And Jesus is saying that this commandment from Deuteronomy 6 is the most important or first of all the commandments because it summarises, it contains within itself the principle behind, so many of the other commandments.

And then Jesus continues:

31 The second is this: `Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

Now here Jesus is quoting from Leviticus 19:18.

Levi 19:18 "`Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

So these 2 commandments from the OT, Jesus said, were a summary of all the other commandments- including the so called 10 Commandments.

So why do we need all the other commandments? Cant we just do with these 2?

Well lets look at these 2 first of all and see what they mean.

First of all note that they are both positive commandments, while the 10 Commandments are all negative. Here we are told what we should do, and there we are told what we should not do. And we actually need both. Because life is complicated- both now and in those days- we need to know not just one thing we should do,  but several things we should not do- just so we really understand how God wants us to live.

Secondly note that they are both about love- that is the positive commandment- to love God and to love our neighbour- that summarises our duty to God and other people.

But thirdly note that we are to love them in very different ways.

We are to love God it seems with with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength.'  Ie we are to love God with everything we have got- with all our feelings, all our intellect, and all our physical strength.

But then notice how we are to love other people-..... as ourselves.

So how are we supposed to love ourselves?......

Are we supposed to love ourselves with all our soul and mind and strength?..... no

That would be supreme arrogance and selfishness. How then are we to love ourselves?  ...........We are to love ourselves in the sense of wanting the best for ourselves; seeking to stay alive and be comfortable,  having enough to eat and drink and to stay warm and dry;  respecting ourselves, having a right valuation of ourselves as made in the image of God, appreciating ourselves when we have done something good, and forgiving ourselves when we have done something wrong. Yes???

 

Well that is how we are to love other people. And not just our neighbours who live next door, not just people like us from the same kind of background or race or religion.. Jesus showed in the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 that our neighbour means anyone we come into contact with. So we are to love everyone we meet in the sense of wanting the best for them, that they should stay alive and be comfortable, and that they should be respected, appreciated and forgiven-just as we would want them to feel about us.

So that is how we are to love other people- and the last 6 of the 10 commandments spell out in more detail what that will mean in terms of what we should not do to people.

But notice the huge difference in the way we are to love other people and the way we are to love God. ..... This is what makes the big difference between a secular morality and a divinely revealed morality. The way we are to love God, compared with how we are to love other people.

Now God has made us all with an immense capacity to love and some of us will shower all our love capacity on one person- it may be our partner or our child or our parent....but human beings werent designed to receive  that total love from others- and we are not able to give  love back. So many of us get hurt or feel rejected or betrayed when the love we pour out to someone else isnt reciprocated in the same way. That total kind of love is to be given to God alone. And we can give it to God because we have received that total love from Him. And because we have received that total love from Him we are able to give out unlimited amounts of love to others.

So we need to take the 10 Commandments alongside these 2 supreme summarising commandments. Because its not enough just to know what we should do- its also important to know what we are not supposed to do. Ie our love needs guidance.

So we have established 3 things: 1stly that according to Jesus- who is our master and teacher as Christians- the commandments of God are all about love. And not just the 10 Commandments..

Matt 22:40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

So we should interpret the whole of the OT in the light of these 2 supreme summarising commandments- sometimes called the Great Commandments.

2ndly that we are to love God in a far deeper and stronger way than other people.

3rdly that we need not just positive commandments as to what we should do, but also negative commandments as to what we should not do.

So in the light of this lets look at the first of the 10, what we might call negative, commandments to see how it all fits together and how it relates to our lives today.

Incidentally do you know the difference between and command and a commandment?..........When I was doing my Hebrew refresher course last year I was reminded that in Hebrew a different word for ‘not’ is used depending on whether its a command or a commandment. A command is when you say ‘now dont hit your sister’  or ‘stop hitting your sister’. A commandment is when you say- ‘you must never hit your sister.’- its a timeless command. More on that later.

So lets look at Commandment 1 in Exodus 20.

Exod 20:1 And God spoke all these words:

2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

3 "You shall have no other gods before me.

 

Now this reminds us that there is a context to the giving of the 10 Commandments. How many of you have watched the old film The 10 Commandments? Jill & recorded it over Christmas and watched it this week. The film is  55 years old and lasts 3 ¾ hours- and only about 20 minutes of it are about the 10 Commandments. It is basically the story of Moses- played by Charlton Heston- and how he grew up in Egypt, raised by Pharoah’s daughter, eventually realised he was a Hebrew and tried unsuccessfully to help his people enslaved in Egypt. He ran away to the desert, met God on the mountain, was sent back to Egypt, and through a series of 10 plagues Pharoah eventually agreed to let the Hebrews go to worship God on the holy mountain. There on Mt Sinai Moses in the course of 40 days received the 10 commandments from God on 2 stone tablets, while at the same time the people, in his absence, were building a golden calf to worship.

So the context of these commandments is that Gods people have been rescued by Him, through Moses, from slavery in Egypt, and have been called to turn away from worshipping the idols of Egypt and to worship the one true God.  In those days there were many different gods on offer from different tribes and nations,  and if you travelled from one country to another you might swap gods to fit in with the local culture. But God is saying here that he is the only true God and they are not to have any rival gods.

Hebrew says I am Yahweh your God-  there shall not be to you other gods before my face, or in my presence. Ie no other rival god shall stand in line with me.

So that makes perfect sense for them- but what about for us. How does this apply to us?

Remember that we have seen that Jesus interpreted all the commands of the OT in terms of love- for God and for other people. And this is important- if Jesus was, is the Son of God, if He was the Word who was eternally with the Father but made flesh in Bethlehem, as we celebrated at Christmas time- then he knew the heart of God more than anyone. He knew what lay behind these OT commandments- and He knew that it was love. Love lies behind all these 10 commandments- and particularly this first one. This is all about Gods love for His people.

 

Just substitute the word ‘husband’ for ‘God’ here for a moment.

Imagine me saying to Jill  ‘I am David your husband, .........I have loved you and supported you in many ways over the last 26 years,  you shall have no other husbands alongside me’. Would that be fair? Would that be a right thing for me to say? And of course Jill could say the same thing to me.

 

This 1^st commandment is an expression of Gods passionate, jealous, consuming love for his people.

Gods feels about his people the way I feel about my wife, and hopefully other husbands here feel about your wives- only so much more so.

God loves you and me so much He doesnt want any rivals for His love. He wants you and me to love Him with all our emotions and intellect and strength. And of course he wants us to love other people as we love ourselves. But He doesnt want us to love other people with all our feelings and intellect and strength.

Now God has given human marriage as the nearest we can get to understanding this relationship between God and His people. So its really important that married couples continue to love each other and be faithful to each other – because this shows us what God is like with us. And  He has also given us human parenthood as another way of understanding this deep love relationship God has with us. In the Parable of the Prodigal Son we see our heavenly Father’s amazing love for us who often turn away from him and rebel against Him. But He continues to love us.

So we are to love our spouses and our children- and our parents- but we are to love God first.

Now of course we cant touch God, we cant be kissed or hugged by God, we cant eat a meal with God- at least not physically. But the experience of God’s presence, of His love, of His peace, of His joy, of His healing – is so overwhelming that nothing can compare with it. All our deepest human

Relationships are preparing us for an eternity on the new earth in the presence of God , where we will all be married to Christ and yet able to love each other.

Now we cant imagine that at the moment, but that is what the Bible teaches us- OT and NT. Its all about God’s love. Being loved by Him and loving Him.  And these 10 Commandments are all about Gods love. They are based on the fact that God has loved His people by rescuing them from slavery- as He has rescued us from slavery to sin- and they call us to respond to Him in faithful exclusive love. These first 4 commandments are like our marriage vows to God.

 

God is saying to us- I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have sent my Son to suffer and die so that you could be forgiven and set free from sin. Now I want you to choose to love me with all that you have got – and dont allow any rivals in your heart.

Now of course our family should not be rivals- cos when we put God first in our lives and receive His love, then we have so much more love for our families- that extra ingredient of divine love is poured into our human love for family and friends. So we are able to love them even more. But we must not put them, or anyone, or anything, before God himself in our lives.

So at the start of this new year. Lets reassess our priorities. Who comes first in our lives? Is it ourselves-? Our career, the boss, our family, our computer, or tv or iphone or wii or xbox?  is it drinking or partying....... or is it God?

 

1Joh 4:10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

 

God has loved you and me  so much- and he wants us to love Him with all our being- as Jesus reminds us.

But to do that we need to remove the rivals from the pitch. You can not love your wife with all your heart if you are having an affair with another woman. You cannot love God with all your heart if you are putting other things before Him. Ask Him to help you

Pray