[Sunday School] What Does the First Commandment Require? (WSC 45-48)

Heavenly Father, thank you for gathering us here together today to worship you in the spirit and truth.

And thank you for bringing us to this class now as we consider the shorter catechism and the larger catechism's teaching on the Ten Commandments.

Father, we thank you for your holy, righteous, and good word, for your law that shows us the way to go.

Help us to remember, Father, that we are not saved by earning, that the word of gospel comes before the word of the law, and that we follow these things not in order to merit your favor, but because we have the favor of Christ, because we are in Christ, because he kept the law fully on our behalf, and now we get to keep the law in response and a response of gratitude and a desire to grow and to flourish, to be sanctified, and conformed more to the image of Christ.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Alright, so last week, if anybody doesn't have a handout, you'll find them on the table back there, and we'll get to those when we get to them.

But last week we talked about the preface to the Ten Commandments, and we talked, and we've been talking the last couple weeks about the different uses of the law and the Christian's relationship to the law.

And it really is important to start with that kind of reminder that the law is not an impersonal, they're not impersonal principles that are picked up out of the sky or discerned by some universal cosmic reason that exists impersonally and abstractly.

The law comes from a holy, righteous, wise, good, uh, omnipotent God.

The law comes from an absolute person.

So the law is personal.

When we keep the law, we're not keeping, it's not like we're we're observing the speed limit because it's posted on a sign.

When we keep the law, we are obeying our God and Father.

When we break the law, we're breaking the law, we're breaking the rules of our God and Father, and we're breaking his heart in a sense.

But of course we have forgiveness in Christ.

And that was true in the Old Testament, just as it's true in the New Testament.

In the preface that we looked at last week, before you get the Ten Commandments, you get, I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

Right?

So it's a statement, uh, it's a gospel statement.

It's a statement of salvation.

You are saved, now therefore behave.

This is what it looks like to live in light of your salvation.

And if you've heard me say that a hundred times before, sorry, you're gonna hear me say it a hundred times again, because it's so important.

Because in our hearts, as a consequence of the fall, we are always prone to invert that relationship, whether we would state it formally out loud, or we would just live in that kind of way where we think that our status with God is determined by how well we're keeping his rules today.

No, our status with God is determined by how well Jesus kept his rules, the active obedience of Christ, meriting a righteousness of his own, and then granting that righteousness to us freely, graciously, by way of grace through faith.

Okay?

So this week, having built on that foundation, we are now going to talk about the first commandment.

And the first question to ask about the first commandment, of course, is what is it?

And that's what question 45 asks.

What is the first commandment?

The first commandment is you shall have no other gods before me.

You shall have no other gods before me.

If you were to summarize the theme of this first commandment, how would you summarize it?

In one word.

In one word.

In one word.

Two if you really need to.

I am.

Okay, alright, no worries.

Love God.

What?

Love God.

Love God, yeah.

That covers the first four.

How about this?

No idolatry.

Idolatry really is the target.

It's the primary target of the first commandment.

And you might tend to think, wait a minute, isn't the second commandment the idolatry commandment?

Yes, it is, but it has to do with the making of images and the worshiping of God in any other way other than what he has ordained, what he has commanded.

It has to do with practice, right?

And where does that practice come from?

That practice comes from the heart.

And so God says, You shall have no other gods before me.

The act of having another God before God is idolatry.

Whether it expresses itself in your words and actions and the things you make with your hands, or it just sits there right in your heart.

So that's idolatry.

That's what it's talking about.

The preface had basically said, I am your God and you are my people.

And now this commandment is saying, you shall have no other gods before me.

Literally in the Hebrew it says, before my face.

And it's interesting because when you look at the, and we'll look at a number of scriptures, but as you go throughout the Bible, it's clear that there are no other gods.

God is the only God.

And yet, idols are given at times by people.

We give idols a kind of existence, like a little g God existence.

And sometimes God will deal with them sort of on those terms.

Like, okay, you think there are other gods?

Let me tell you what your attitude should be with respect to those other gods.

I'm the supreme God.

I'm the God of all gods, right?

Again, not that they exist, but even if they did, they wouldn't hold a candle to the true God.

There's an element here that's really important for us to grasp and to think about.

Because God starts with the preface, he establishes a relationship with the people of God.

Then he says, You shall have no other gods before me.

Throughout the the Bible, the language of adultery is usually used, or is often used, to talk about idolatry.

And when God says, so uh when when I was years ago, when I was a musician, I played a USO tour in Kuwait and Iraq.

And when we were in Kuwait City, we would drive on the highways and stuff, and we had a security detail.

And we would drive by these houses, and they're like they're like level houses.

They kind of look like layer cakes.

And one of our security guys explained to us, it's like, that's where the Kuwaiti men, the well-to-do Kuwaiti men lived, and each man, each floor was for a different wife.

And the wives produced, or the children produced by that wife.

So he had different, right, the one and one man, different wives, uh, and different levels.

And what God is saying, you know, what God is is is commanding here is a profound spiritual monogamy.

He's saying, I am your God, I'm your father, I'm your husband, I took you out of Egypt, I took you out of that house, and I brought you into my house.

Now, don't you bring any other spouses into my house.

Don't you try to take for yourself another husband.

You are in my house, one-in-one, spiritual monogamy.

And that's the heart of what idolatry is violating.

God takes us to himself.

He takes us as his bride and says, Don't cheat on me.

Don't bring other spouses into my house.

So let's look at some idolatry in the Bible.

Uh, idolatry shows up a lot because it was Israel's besetting sin.

Jeremiah 2, 26 through 28.

As the thief is shamed when caught, so the house of Israel shall be shamed.

They, their kings, their officials, their priests, and their prophets, who say to a tree, You are my father, and to a stone, you gave me birth.

For they have turned their back to me, and not their face.

But in the time of their trouble they say, Arise and save us.

But we're your gods that you made for yourself.

Let them arise if they can save you, in your time of trouble, for as many as your cities are your gods, O Judah.

So let's let's just stop and think a little bit about the nature of idolatry.

How in what you just heard me read, what is the folly of idolatry?

How would you how would you answer that question?

Why is idolatry so foolish?

You use my word.

What's that?

It serves no purpose.

It's like worried about if the sun's gonna rise.

Yeah.

Yeah, um, jumping on that, Keith, that's outstanding.

Luke 21, 34, our Lord says, but watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of his life.

Sarah and I were talking about on the way in, you know, how the Lord is equating drunkenness with the cares of its life.

And and I think a very in already idle is cares of its life, like like the third soul with the fourth.

Um, are you rolling around constantly undermine how is this going to play out?

Is this crime going to corrupt me?

Is this crime going to reap?

Is this how can I control this situation?

And and Sarah read a great commentary that eternity gets put into the horizon, and you're not, and that is really convicted.

What are you doing on?

What are you, and that's idolatry.

And it's robbing you of joy and peace.

But it'sn't like this this commandment is like, don't, don't, don't.

It's like because when you do it, you're you're being robbed of joy and peace.

And you're seeking those things in the wrong place.

So it says, again, we're looking at Jeremiah 2, 26 through 28.

It says, uh, you know, it's it's pronouncing shame, right?

On those who say to a tree, you are my father, and to a stone, you gave me birth.

Do you think they're really saying to trees, you're my father, and to stones that you gave me birth?

Is that what Israel is doing?

Yeah, but they're giving honor.

So the way idolatry worked in the ancient world is, you know, for the most part, people didn't actually believe that the statues they made out of wood and stone were actual gods.

They believed that they were praying to their real gods, whoever those were, by way of those little figurines and the household gods and all that sort of stuff.

But the effect is the same.

Because, you know, because those gods ultimately don't exist.

And so the ridiculousness of it, it is indeed ridiculous.

You're praying to you think you're praying through the statue up to the skies, but you're just praying to the statue.

That's the effect of what you're doing.

And so you're saying to Wood, you're my father.

You're saying to stone, you gave me birth.

And the folly of it is that you're coming to these inanimate things, thinking that they point to more when they point to nothing, and expecting them to give you what only God can give you.

And Israel especially had no excuse for that.

Because the God of the universe had revealed himself to them.

He had introduced himself to them, specifically by taking them out of Egypt and releasing them from slavery.

So it's especially silly that the people of God would turn away from the true God and start pursuing these different things in order to, you know, part of it was political, right?

Every country had its own gods, its own idols, and all those sorts of things.

And when Solomon married his thousand wives, right, he did that in order to secure political arrangements with their fathers and the different lands around Israel.

And in doing that, he took on their idols themselves.

And you have this proliferation of idols in Israel, and people would pray to them, in part some because they thought they were real, in part some because they were trying to do what the neighbors do, right?

And all of it's just folly, all of it's just pointless, without effect, tempt.

Um, if those statues were built to God, would it have been idolatry?

Yes.

And that's the second commandment.

And we will get into that next week, Brennan.

The rich should go to war, the same thing.

Whether it's idolatry, you know, gods and lion.

That's what I know about.

So we think it brings us to freedom, it's a freedom.

Individuality and we have control of our lives, we really just assigned to that thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, and when you get into the New Testament, because in the Old Testament it's it's very much uh a kind of physical kind of thing.

It's very much we're we're we're worshiping false gods according to false images, so it's this very, it's it's it's like a very tangible, concrete thing, idolatry is.

But when you get into the New Testament, it actually gets a little more abstract.

I mean, you have the concrete there.

In the New Testament, the New Testament background, in the Greco-Roman world, they had a whole pantheon of gods, and yes, the introduction of philosophy had kind of turned some people away from the gods of Homer and more toward reason and wisdom and things like that, but even in that, there was still a lot of mysticism and a lot of worship of gods as rational principles and stuff.

So you have idols of the mind that you start seeing in the Greco-Roman world, but you also have straight-up idols.

I mean, they had the cult of the emperor in Rome, where they would worship the emperor as a god.

So you had all these things continuing to go on, and Paul talks about them in Romans 1.

He talks about all idolatry as claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Right?

Turning to that physical aspect.

And yet at the end of 1 John, he's talking about all these different abstract things about how you love one another, serve one another, so on and so forth.

And the last line in 1 John, little children keep yourself from idols.

Ephesians 5, you see this shift to something more than just a physical idol.

Ephesians 5 5.

You may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous, that is an idol, an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ in God.

Or Colossians 3 5.

Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil, desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Now, why would covetousness be idolatry?

Anyone for something?

What are we not thinking about?

Anyone want to add to that or take away from it?

Yeah, it's a long one, but it's a long one that also satisfy the long prices.

Sometimes I think that we build up these idols because we feel like, oh, I I'm not I I have to control this.

So you build up these both physical and metaphysical idols to help you feel like, oh, I have control of the situation.

Yeah.

And it's like, no, you know.

Including running to the news to assuage your anxiety or run into the what's the stock market doing today to assuage your anxiety.

It's like you're going to something to let me read like the trader form news got open today.

Ah, I'm having a great day.

Because our gas prices are going down and that we're skyrocketing the stock market.

Right.

What's the news?

Don't turn on the news every 30 minutes.

Are you right?

I mean, that's yeah, that's using other things to earn now.

Yeah.

Right, man.

Well, the problem is you think you are in control of the situation.

Or you can.

Or you go to outside sources to try and well that's that's part of the uh the deceit of idolatry, right?

It gives you a God you can hold in your hands, who you can manipulate, for lack of a better term.

Uh God, we need you to do this.

We need you to do this, God, right?

As opposed to the real God who transcends all creation.

Where's that line?

Because like food, have to have it for life.

Yeah.

So if I'm seeking food desperately, am I idolizing it?

I don't think so.

I mean, or a job.

And yet Paul talks about some people whose God is their belly.

Right?

So, yeah, trying to live, trying to eat, sure, yeah.

I mean, God gives those good gifts, God sustains us, and Jesus even teaches us to pray to God and ask for our daily bread.

But if food becomes your all-encompassing obsession, where when you're sad, when you're scared, when you're anxious, when you're angry, uh, the place you run isn't to prayer, the place you run is to food.

Right?

Food can gluttony is the idolatry of food.

Right?

So, yeah, where's the line?

I don't know.

Right?

I think you could clearly say what's that?

It's on the back.

It's on the scale, yeah.

If your BMI goes past 29 or whatever it is, there it is.

I don't even know if that's the right number.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, right, right.

So if if idolatry is worshiping the wrong gods or the wrong things as God, uh, having other gods before God, what would you say is the cure for idolatry?

Putting breaths first.

What's that?

Putting the breath first.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Putting the true God first, right?

And we get to him by way of Christ.

So the cure for false worship is true worship.

If you're worshiping the wrong thing, worship the right thing.

And that's why salvation can be described as turning from idols.

1 Thessalonians 1, 9 through 10.

Uh, for speaking of the believers in Macedonia and Achaia, themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned from turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath of God.

I think practically it's prayer.

Um the the the you start to become the the visceral response is prayer, yeah, as opposed to trying to control it yourself.

We're running a prayer.

I have this this worry, this concern.

Prayer and rely on the promises of God found in scripture.

Love, protection, provision, sparrows, hairs on your head, and then when you meditate on that and chew on that, it goes away.

Read the Psalms.

If you want to talk about getting rid of idols, read the Psalms, and your your head just goes right to the Lord.

Yeah.

It starts off by saying that man is purely.

We all worship something versus something that shows that turn that turn on.

We all worship something.

And is that the one true God universe, or is that something else?

Yeah, you quoted Burkhoth.

Now I'm gonna quote Bob Dylan.

You gotta worship somebody.

Right?

I I think I prefer Mr.

Burkhoff.

A little bit, especially if you need a nap.

I go to that.

Yeah, I go to that again and again.

He plagiarized Bobby, but anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're right.

I mean, we are religious beings.

We are created in the image of God.

And God is a triune God.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

What do the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do eternally in the happy land of the Trinity?

They glorify one another.

Alright, it's a mutual glorification society, right?

And so we're created in that image.

We're created to glorify something.

And the thing we ought to glorify is the trying God.

What is man's chief end?

Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

If we don't glorify God, it's not like we're just not gonna glorify something.

We're gonna glorify something.

We're gonna worship something.

We're gonna yoke our identity and destiny to something.

And if that's not God, it's an idol.

Boom.

We're done.

Well, we're not.

We've been talking abstractly, and now the next two questions of the catechism get more concrete.

Alright, what are the duties required under the first commandment, and what are the sins forbidden under the first commandment?

Remember, we talked about last week or the week before about the law, the commandments, are really a summary of everything that Scripture teaches.

And so we look at the first commandment and we say, okay, you shall have no other gods before you.

What does that mean?

What does that really mean?

What does that look like in practice?

And you've got to open your eyes up to the whole Bible to see what it is.

And that's precisely what the divines did.

The shorter catechism gives the short answer, of course.

What is required in the first commandment?

The first commandment requires us to know and acknowledge God to be the only true God and our God and to worship and glorify Him accordingly.

But then we have the larger catechism, which when it comes to the Ten Commandments, really unpacks this.

And I put it in this format for you so that you can easily see all of the Bible verse references.

If you don't have a handout, there's a pile of them on the table in the back.

Would somebody read question 104 or the answer to it for us?

What are the duties required in the first commandment?

The duties required in the first commandment are knowing and acknowledging God to be the only true God and our God.

And to worship the Lord by the Lord.

By thinking, meditating, remembering, singing, honoring, the glory, using loving, desiring, fearing.

No, something we talked about when we were introducing the Ten Commandments is that when you have a negative commandment, like you shall have no other gods before you, the positive duty is always implied in that negative commandment.

So for example, um, you shall not lie, right?

The ninth commandment.

The positive duty, you shall tell the truth.

It's two different sides of the same coin.

So all of these duties that were laid out are essentially the other side of the coin from you shall have no other gods before me.

Alright, so what does it mean to have the true God before us, so to speak?

And these duties lay that out for us.

Now, what sticks out to you in that list?

Either because it's something you haven't thought of, or maybe it's something that's confusing.

What sticks out?

I think choosing one thing that I've really wrestled with is the concept of free will, and so we have to actively be choosing him in every situation.

And it can definitely be easy to kind of fall into a one pattern or even recognize new ones that are not that are not good.

Yeah.

Yeah, and wherever you are on that, what whichever side you're on for the free will kind of debate, uh the Arminian says, you must choose God.

The Calvinist says, you must choose God.

But we believe that God must choose us before we can choose him.

Again, wherever you land on that, the thing you have to do remains the same.

You must choose God.

And that's an important part of having him as your God.

Choosing him once or more than once?

What do you think?

Continuously.

Continuously.

Throughout life, all the time, right?

Just fire up your internet browser.

Or uh, I was gonna say go to the mall, but we don't really have those anymore.

Go to the store, go to the car lot, go anywhere, right?

Life is gonna propose for you alternative gods.

I mean, that's how advertising works, right?

You need this in order to feel complete.

You deserve this.

Don't you want this?

Look at this, right?

And if you give your heart to that kind of messaging, then you're giving your, you, you, you're giving your I'm right.

Don't mishear me, right?

You see an ad for a cheeseburger and you want a cheeseburger, I'm not saying you're worshipping a cheeseburger.

Right?

But if your heart inclines down that road, if you buy this uh the idea, that's you know, um, I can't think of specific commercials right now because I don't watch much TV.

But, you know, if if the if the car commercial says, you know, you deserve this, or don't you want it?

What do you want people to see that you're kind of this kind of person, so on and so forth, it's it's scratching itches you have that uh are ultimately only can ultimately only be scratched by God Himself.

Desires for status, desires for a relationship, desires for fulfillment, all these sorts of things.

If you think you're gonna get it from the car, guess what?

The car is becoming an idol.

Or whatever the end to which that car is a means is, that's the idol, right?

So all throughout life, we're gonna be presented with these opportunities to worship something or to find our meaning from something other than God Himself.

So choosing is a really key word because when you're presented with the choice, what are you gonna choose?

Choose God again and again and again.

James.

I think it's also a heart posture because the Lord loves to give us good things.

He delights to give us good things.

Right.

So I think it I I do, I think it's a heart posture.

If you're going to go and look at that BMW 7 series and you can't make the rent, you know, it's it's you know, where's the responsibility?

Where's that heart posture?

Right.

And and my brother made a really good point when he talks to uh what was your name?

I'm sorry.

Brian.

Brian.

I'm James.

When Brian, when Brian mentioned, you know, the new you're choosing something, it's a new sin, right, or a new idol.

I have found in my walk that scripture reveals that, right?

Scripture reveals, oh wow, I do that, right?

And the Lord talked about the cares of the life of this life.

And so that's why in the word, every day, it isn't just you know, you have to do it.

So that that really impacted me.

So I agree.

Yeah.

Anything else from this list stand out to you?

Uh I like the word you know, be careful in all things to please him.

Yeah.

Not just all things please.

Yeah.

Being careful in all things to please him.

There's a kind of intentionality there, right?

Yeah, it's very thoughtful.

Yeah.

We were talking about control earlier just before that.

It says include all obedience and submission to man.

Is a with the whole man.

I'm sorry.

Here, have your thunder back.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry, go ahead, continue.

But you know, we're looking at the Westminster, but also what question one of the idler, you know, of what is my only comfort in life and death.

I'm not my own.

That I have no control.

I have no ability in and of myself to see the kingdom of God.

And that's my comfort, that I'm not my own.

But I belong to him and everything.

And so that means, as you all live into, unfortunately, is all my thunder, the whole name, you know, not just the hands and the feet, not just the mind of those Presbyterians like to sit up here and think of all our nice superior doctrine, but you know, the whole heart, yeah, the soul, uh which I you know fail every day.

Yeah, it's gracious submission.

But um the sense of chain that I have no control.

Yeah, I must yield to something, why not to try it out?

Yeah.

Yeah, the whole man bit is really what gets me there.

Uh there uh there is no, you know, Abraham Kuyper in his lectures on Calvinism, he said, there is not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign above all, does not declare mine.

So there's no corner of the universe where Jesus doesn't claim his supremacy.

There's no corner of our existence where God does not claim his supremacy.

And um, I remember that's one of the first things that really started to click for me when I started going to church consistently because there was a time in my life where I thought, like, well, this is great, right?

This really helps me live a better life.

I can become a more spiritual person and so on and so forth.

And then like I really started to hear the gospel and the claims of the gospel, the claims of scripture.

It's like, oh, it's not just about me in my spiritual life.

It's actually about me and my whole life.

That this this Christian faith thing isn't, you don't just get to put it in a box or a bucket somewhere in your life.

But it actually is all controlling.

That's that's what it is.

That's the nature of what, who God is and what he requires of us.

So yielding all obedience and submission to him with the whole man, yeah, that's like my spiritual thoughts, but it's also my non-spiritual thoughts.

It's uh it's what I do with my body, what I don't do with my body, it's what I do in the voting booth, it's the jobs I choose to take or not take.

It's it's all these sorts of things.

It's everything in life.

There is not a single thing we do or decision we make that should not first run through the filter of God and what he's revealed in his word.

Falling short of that, you know, even unwittingly, demonstrates that there's some aspect of my life where God is not the supreme being and his word is not the supreme principle.

God, you've got everything to say to me about everything except what I watch on TV.

God, you've got the control over every aspect of my life except who I date.

Right?

All so, I don't know.

That line really, really does get me.

Yielding all obedience and submission to him with the whole man.

Not three-quarters of the man.

What's that?

So we try and we try and try and those that fail.

Yeah.

Well, we try and we try.

We fail a little more today, or a little less today than we did yesterday.

Hopefully, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, that's well, that's the promise of sanctification, right?

That we are being conformed to the image of Christ, and that we are moving in that direction.

I mean, we see in Jesus the model of that, right?

He with the whole man, the son, yielding perfect obedience to the Father throughout, especially in John.

We see that relationship, we see what that looks like, and that's what we're shooting for.

That's what we're aiming for.

And by grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, God is actually taking us there.

We may not see that like if we zoom way in and we're having a bad day or a bad week or a bad month or a bad year, but if we zoom out, if we are in Christ, the promises that he's taking us there.

And then when we die and we go to be with him, or if he comes to be with us first, the work will be done.

And then we actually will be able to do this, yield all obedience and submission with the whole man perfectly, without any hint of doing anything else, without any desire to do anything else at all.

Talk about the effort and the practical implication for that sanctification.

I know we talk about synergism and monergism, but with regard to that sanctification, with regard to that getting, doing better today than yesterday, right?

The ordinary means of grace, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, did you want me to talk about it, or did you want you to talk about it?

Yeah, uh, I mean, it's the Dallas Willard quote.

Grace is not opposed to effort, grace is opposed to earning.

So work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works within you, both to will and to do for his good pleasure.

Uh work out.

Work, right?

Do the work.

But and that's but again, don't invert your justification and sanctification.

Be diligent to make your calling and election, sure, like 2 Peter says.

Supplement your knowledge with so on and so forth.

I forget exactly how the list goes.

Uh do those things.

Put your hand to the plow.

Uh avail yourself of the ordinary means of grace.

Walk in obedience, walk in submission, all these sorts of things.

Uh, and that's that's you know, that's that's a conscious active effort that we are engaged in, and we are engaged in encouraging each other in, but just remember that as you do that, grace comes first.

And grace comes last.

You will not, as Paul says in Galatians, perfect by the flesh what was begun in the Spirit.

So don't walk according to the flesh, walk according to the Spirit.

Do these things, not in your power, but in God's power, looking to Him for everything you need for them.

Alright, so those are the duties required.

Let's talk about the sins forbidden in the time we have left.

The shorter catechism, question and answer, what is forbidden in the first commandment?

The first commandment forbids the denying or not worshiping and glorifying the true God as God and our God, and the giving of that worship and glory to any other which is due to him alone.

Now, if you flip over your sheet, you got the sins forbidden in the first commandment.

And would some brave soul please read that answer for us?

The sins forbidden in the first commandment are the whole thing?

Yeah.

The sins forbidden in the first commandment are atheism in denying or not having a God, idolatry in having or worshiping more gods than one, or any with, or instead of the true God, the not having and abouching him for God and our God, the omission or neglect of anything due to him, required in this commandment, ignorance, forgetfulness, misapprehensions, false opinions, unworthy and wicked thoughts of him, bold and curious searching into his secrets, all profaneness, hatred of God, self-love, self-seeking, and all other inordinate and immoderate setting of our mind, will, or affections upon other things, and take them off from him in whole or in part.

Vain credulity, unbelief, heresy, misbelief, distrust, despair, incorrigibleness, and insensibleness under judgments, heart to heart, pride, presumption, carnal security, tempting of God using unlawful means, and trusting in lawful means, carnal delights and joys, corrupt, blind and indiscreet zeal, lukewarmness and deadness in the things of God, estranging ourselves and apostatizing from God, praying or giving any religious worship to saints, angels, or any other creatures, all compacts and consulting with the devil and hearkening to his suggestions, making men the lords of our faith and conscience, flighting and despising God and his commands, resisting and grieving of his spirit, discontent and impatience at his dispensations, charging him foolishly for the evils he inflicts on us, and as driving the praise of any good we either are, have, or can do to fortune, idols, ourselves, or any other creature.

Guilty.

That does sound like, if anyone's ever been in the criminal court, that sounds like that.

This guy's just getting hammered.

And at the end, you know, how do you find?

Well, remember the first use of the law.

Right?

Guilty.

To convict.

Yeah.

And we'll talk, we'll talk about it some tonight, tonight's service.

Yeah, the first use of the law to convict us of our sin and send us running to our Savior.

Amen.

To remind us of just how much we need him.

It tells us which way we're supposed to go, right?

And we should go in that direction.

That's the third use of the law, but recognize that when we fall short, there's grace.

There's a savior.

So what jumps out at you from this list?

Bold and curious searching into his secrets.

Bold and curious searching into a secret.

Which number is that?

Nine.

Nine.

Or it's it's actually ten.

But yeah.

And the the because the footnote is ten.

But a quote it cites Deuteronomy 29, 29 there.

Anybody know that one by heart?

That's actually an Isaiah.

But it's the same Isaiah.

Isaiah keeps things for himself.

What he's revealed to us is what's revealed.

Yeah.

The secrets of God.

Yeah, the hidden things of God, or the secret things of God are hidden, but the revealed things he makes known to us and our children so that we may keep his statutes forever.

It's kind of a paraphrase there.

But yeah, that's right.

There's God has revealed what God has revealed.

And we often, at least in our day and age, we're a little too quick to appeal to mystery.

Like we we we stop short.

It's a kind of intellectual sloth or laziness where it's like we say, well, we just don't know the answer to those questions.

Has given us the answers to certain questions in his word.

For certain individuals today, maybe it was more prevalent back in the day, right?

Especially when you have kind of academic speculative theology in the form of like medieval Roman Catholicism and some following Detrant too, you had a lot of speculation that went way behind what Scripture teaches.

So asking questions that the Bible doesn't ask, and giving answers that the Bible doesn't give, and giving them with the strength of dogma, even.

And so we, alright, this is warning us that it's you have both sides of the coin here.

Because toward the beginning, there some of the sins are ignorance and misapprehension, false opinion.

There's a kind of falling short of what God has revealed of himself, either from your ignorance and not knowing it, or your misapprehensions based in your own thoughts.

And then there's a sort of overshooting that happens, right?

When you think beyond what's been revealed.

And the result, you know, the bullseye is the middle where God has revealed himself and what he said about himself in Scripture.

Whether you undershoot or you overshoot, the effect is the same.

You've missed the target.

And that's that's if you miss the target, well, since you're thinking about God and you're thinking of the object of your worship, if you miss the target, then everything all around the target is an item.

So you may think that you're being sanctified and spiritual by bold and curious searching into the person of God that goes beyond Scripture.

You know, there's a kind of sanctified speculation, right, where we try to think and we're humble about it, and we're trying to stay within the bounds of God's word.

That's one thing.

There's another thing where you go beyond the word and you construct a whole system about who God is and what he's like and what you need to believe about him.

Well, then you're worshiping a God of your own making.

Right?

And that's an item.

And that's a sin against the first commandment.

And the one leads to the other, too.

Like you said, if you're searching for something that's not there, you're prone to give a false opinion.

Right.

We were just talking about a couple of weeks ago you asked a question how can people rot their joy, and my answer was I was seeking more from God and it doesn't seem to come to me.

Is that what I'm doing?

I'm boldly wanting more?

Not necessarily.

I mean, because it seems to me that I don't know how everybody else in this room feels.

That I'm not in the right place.

How do you mean I don't know?

Okay.

Well, you know, the bold and curious searching, right?

It's it's when you're playing an academic game with God.

Uh you get this in a lot of more philosophical thinking where you just kind of get crazy about who God is and what he's like, and you start adding all these philosophical, theological structures on top of him that aren't tethered to his word.

And God becomes like this intellectual game, this intellectual construct.

Right?

That's more about what that is getting at.

Wanting more from God, it's a question of what's the more that you want, right?

Do you want more of him?

Well, you're supposed to want more of him.

I want my belief to be stronger, I want my faith to be stronger.

Yeah.

Those are good things.

Those are things that he tells us to pursue.

So it's really, you can want more of a thing, and in wanting more of it, you reveal that you never really wanted the thing, you wanted something else.

That's idolatry.

Wanting more of the thing, wanting more of the person, wanting more of God, that's never idolatry.

Because God is infinite and we're finite.

And if we're made to glorify him and enjoy him forever, it's like we're we're heading down that rabbit hole eternally, and we're supposed to want that.

We're supposed to want to do that.

Tim's point, I think, throws up a red flag, it's an excellent point.

It throws up a red flag with when we read this list with scrupulosity, right?

It'll drive me mad.

Yeah.

And and so could you touch on that and yeah.

Yeah, don't.

Well, think about the so the catechism, it's a moral education.

Everything in our lives is educating us, everything in our lives is forming us.

So we come to everything, even to the question of who God is and what does it look like for me to worship God.

If we were forced to, and if we had help in teasing it out, we would have our own list just like this one.

Maybe this long, maybe even longer.

Just these unarticulated assumptions that we bring to all of this sort of stuff.

So, what a catechism answer like this does, is take the Bible's teaching, which is like this, condense it down into a list, into a framework, into something that can actually form our moral sensibilities.

And so learning something like this, internalizing something like this, what it's supposed to do is give you a way of seeing and being in the world.

What you're not supposed to do is take this checklist every single day and just kind of uh turn it into this sort of scorekeeping exercise where you're an evaluator, inquisitor, kind of maybe there's value in doing something like that if you want, like, if you want to think carefully and well about your life, right?

But the wrong move is to take this and turn it into a sort of strait jacket, or to let it drive you into the dirt and keep you there.

Again, remember, all of this is within the framework of grace.

You already are saved.

You already are a son, a daughter, a saint if you are in Christ.

Okay, that's settled.

Now, as a son, how can I better love my father?

I can better love my father by doing these things and not doing these things.

And so I'm gonna let this drive me into scripture and teach me what it looks like, but I am not going to get hung up on myself, just like I wouldn't want one of my kids to get all hung up in themselves and all hung up in their failures and to just constantly live there with a checklist in their mind.

Take, let this inform the path for you, and then walk the path.

And when you fall, okay, let the spirit pick you up and get up and walk back down the path.

Does that does that make sense?

Yeah, exactly.

And and avoiding despair because you have a beautiful heart.

You have a beautiful heart, and and and the evil one wasn't driving you to despair.

Well, definitely.

When whatever, when I Dow.

Yeah.

Crucify myself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You don't have to do that.

Jesus got crucified the one time for you.

And none of us have to do that.

That's not what this is for.

It's it drives us to the cross so that we can give thanks and rejoice in the fact that when he said it is finished, it is finished.

Done.

Done.

And that's always the important reminder, right?

The gospel, the Christian faith, is not a religion of do, it's a religion of done.

There's stuff to do.

But it all flows from the one thing that Christ has done.

For me, the most impactful sentence in the entire Bible is fish.

Yeah.

Alright, let's pray.

Lord, thank you for this time you've given us together to consider the first commandment.

You are our God.

You have rescued us from the land of Egypt.

You've taken us out of the house of bondage.

You have defeated that ultimate Pharaoh, the devil himself on the cross.

You've saved us from our sin.

You've set us free.

And Lord, you've given us a path to walk in your word, but help us to remember that we could not even be on that path unless you had placed us there.

Lord, help us not to live with a kind of tortured obedience.

Help us to live with a joyful obedience.

Knowing that this is the path to life.

And that that life for us in Christ is a prize that has already been won.

So we don't have to win it.

We don't have to earn it.

We want to live in light of it.

And we pray that you would continue to teach us and to train us by way of these words so that it would become second nature to us.

So it would be natural for us to walk in this way and to intentionally choose you again and again over all of the other pretenders that exist in our world and in our heads.

As we come to worship you together this morning, we'll use everything in the service to turn our thoughts toward you and put our focus on you.

For Christ is ours, we are his, and we are your children.

And as your children, we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.