I wonder how many of you have heard about the Creation Museumwhich is locatedin Kentucky? The Creation Museum is a thirty-six million dollar, 60 thousand square footstate-of-the-art facility that brings the book of Genesis and the story of creation to life. The museum is complete with dioramas of animals and nature, audio-visual presentations, animatronic dinosaurs, fossil replicas, and diagrams of geological formations.
But not everyone is excited about the museum. One website derides the Creation Museum as, "America's new mecca of fanatical ignorance." Another website describes how the Bible’s account of creation, Adamand Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah’s ark, the tower of Babel, and Sodomand Gomorrah are nothing more than, "silly mythology." The museum is a place for, "stupid seven year olds", "defies common sense", is "offensive", an "embarrassment", a "place for fools", and is "child abuse."And these are some of the less vulgar comments.
If you profess your belief in God, if you profess your belief in creation, and if you reject evolution, you are considered a fool. Only a fool believes that God exists.Only an idiot believes the stories of the Bible, believes that God has acted in history, believes in miracles, believes in Christ, or places hope in the resurrection.
Even if God does exist, we are told there is no way to know any truth about God. "You have your ideas about God, I have my ideas about God, and Hindus, Muslims, and Jews have their ideas.You worship your god and I’ll worship my god."
God’s first commandment: Youshall have no other gods before me.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that God’s first command in Exodus 20:2-3 (NIV)reads, "I am theLORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me."
This commandment represents the starting point for a relationship with God and it challenges two false assumptions prevalent in our culture. The first assumption is that God doesn’t exist. The second assumption is that God is unknowable.
Does God exist and can he be known by us?
First, does God exist? In the first commandment God says, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery." Notice the verb tense, "I am." I exist. I have acted on your behalf .I am acting on your behalf. There is a history. There is evidence. There are miraculous deeds. You wouldn’t be where you are today were it not for God’s blessing.
Hebrews 11:6 (NIV) says, "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."
And then consider the second assumption thatGod cannot be known. "You shall have no other gods before me." Notice the phrase, "no other gods before me." There is only one true God and that God is who he is. He is knowable. He is one being andone entity. He isn’t everything that everyone pretends him to be. He is not everything that every prophet or religion has claimed him to be. He is not every thing that every holy book happens to say he is.
As a matter of responsibility, this first commandment obligates us to not only believe in God’s existence but to earnestly seek God with the intention of knowing him.
Are you seeking God with all of your heart and soul?
Yesterday I was talking with a mother. She was describing how her adopted son has wanted to meet his biological mother and father for the last several years. He had this inner yearning to know his true identity, his background, and his story. It was eating him alive. I was impressed with this mother. She kept his birth certificate and information because she knew the day would come when her adopted son would want to know his real parents.
This past year he finally got to meet his mother and look into her eyes and put the missing pieces together. He learned about his mother’s circumstances, why he was given up for adoption, that he was loved, and that his mother loved him so much that she wanted to make sure his needs were taken care of.
It’s no different in our relationship with God. There will always be people who deny God’s existence or who insist that God cannot be known. Yet God commands us to earnestly seek him. And this is a command with a promise. Deuteronomy 4:29 (NIV) says, "But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul."
So let me ask the most important question of all.Are you seeking God with all your heart and soul? Do you believe he exists? Is your greatest yearning to know the one true God? Are you exerting any effort to know God? Have you carefully weighed the thousands of years ofevidence of God’s working in history? Don’t ignore your gut, your conscience, your intuition, or your longing in your spirit to know its creator. The fool says that in his heart there is no God.
God’s second commandment is to have noidols.
Exodus 20:1-6 (NIV) says, "And God spoke all these words: 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, theLORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.' "
There is something you should know about God. Our God is a jealous God. Not in some sort of perverse, imbalanced, late-night stalker kind of way. Our God has a holy and righteous kind of jealousy. He yearns for an exclusive relationship with us. He yearns for our attention, our affection, our worship, our energies, our creativity, our gifts, our time, and our exclusive devotion.
Ephesians 1:12 (NIV) tells us we exist,"for the praise of his (God’s) glory." The whole idea of worship is that our wholelives areto be centered and rooted in God. God cannot be relegated to the fringes of our lives.
Worship is a relationship with God.
Worship is a relationship. Imagine being in a marriage where your husband never made any time for you orwhere your wife never made any time for you. Early in the morning they were preoccupied with eating breakfast, picking out their clothes, and reading the newspaper. During the day they were wrapped up in their work. No friendly call, no lunch together, no e-mail, nothing. After work they ran off with the kids to sports activities, maybe had a drink with some friends, or came home only to head outside to tend to the lawn, laundry, dishes, or other things. In the evening they were preoccupied with the internet, or watching thier favorite television show like "Lost", or sports programming.At night they were so worn out and exhausted that they fell asleep in their chair.
What if you were in a relationship where things like shopping, motorcycling, working overtime, becoming successful, gaining recognition, school activities, television programming, surfing the internet, tending to relatives, in-laws, playing sports, eating, smoking marijuana, fixing up the home, fishing, boating, buying collectibles, reading books, or doing a million other things came first before any time was spent with you?
How would you feel aboutbeing put off by someone you loved deeply? How would you feel about being ignored andneglected? And how long do you suppose such a relationship would last?
God's jealousy is stirred whenever we turn away from him and deny his existence by our preoccupation with people, places, and things. That is what an idol is.An idol is anything that occupies a bigger space in our life than God almighty. God’s jealousy is stirred by the countless idols that cause us to neglect, substitute, and ultimately show contempt for the very purpose of our existence. The purpose of our existence is to worship and love God.
How can we claim to love someone who we don’t even take time to acknowledge, know, love, or serve? How can we claim to love someone when we're too busy loving ourselves and loving life?
As you consider the second commandment ask yourself an important question. Do I want to be the object of God’s love and affection?Or do I want mypreoccupation to be with thestuff of life?Would I just as soonGod withdraw his affection and blessing on my life?
We can perhaps stirs God’s jealousy for a time. But should we refuse to repent of our idol worship, he may very well give us over to the million of things that we value more highly.
The danger of idols.
Let me end with a few comments about idols.
- Idols steal our hearts and minds away from true worship, from truly relating to God and loving God.
- Idols shift our focus toward created things and away from our creator who is forever praised.
- Idols rival God’s rightful place in our lives. Idols are substitutes for God, God-replacements, and futile attempts to fill only that which God himself can fill.
- Idols are all-consuming in nature. They squeeze out the life of God leaving us anxious, stressed-out, burned out, and with very little to offer others afterwards.
- Idols foster a dependency, an unhealthy attachment. It becomes as if life itself is about some person, place, or thing.
- Idols misdirect our faith. Instead of trusting in God, the idol becomes the object of faith. We trust in our idol togive us meaning, purpose, life, and hope. We trust in the work of our hands and in created things.
- Idols distract us from fulfilling our deepest needs. Our idol becomes what we think we need as much as life itself.
- Idols elevate our desires over our sacrifice and obedience. We cannot give up our idols even for a moment. We crave them, think about them constantly, declare our desperate need for them, and become angry when people challenge them or try to separate us from them.
- Idols consume our time, talents, treasure, and thoughts.Just look at the credit card statement andcheck register.
- Idols become our very identity. We're known by what we worship. We're known by what we can’t let go of. Webecome what we worship.
- Idols carve out a kind of morality of their own. They take us away from godly morality, holiness, and responsibility.
- Idols have their own unique social dynamic that takes us away from the community of God. Instead of being connected in redemptive relationships, our idols connect us with unhealthy relationships. The bad company begins to corrupt good character, corrupt purity, and compromise holiness.
- Idols destroy our eternal perspective of God. The cause us to focus on the finite, the temporal, and instant gratification.
- Idols enslave us with their constant upkeep.
- Worst of all, our idols cannot save us or respond whenwe call out to them. They leave us alone and dead in our transgressions and sins. Idols rob us of life and they make false promises to us that they can never keep. They cause us to become manipulative and selfish.