First Commandment
Ten Commandments Quiz
Many people in our society think that the 10 commandments are a good idea. Some people even hope that they will get to heaven by keeping them. But how well do we know the 10 commandments?
Can you write down the 10 commandments? (Nb: double points if you get them in the right order)
1._________________________________________
2._________________________________________
3._________________________________________
4._________________________________________
5._________________________________________
6._________________________________________
7._________________________________________
8._________________________________________
9._________________________________________
10.________________________________________
2. In the Old Testament, how many Commandments did God give to Israel?
2
10
Around 100
Over 600
3. Which of the 10 Commandment did Jesus consider the greatest?
The first
The tenth
All of them
None of them
(see Mark 12:28-34; Matthew 22:34-40 )
4. Write out the commandment that Jesus considered the greatest?
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
5. All or some of the 10 commandments can be found in the bible at
Exodus 20
Deuteronomy 5
Romans 13
All of the above
6. Love your neighbour as yourself is:
The 2nd most important commandment
Not in the 10 commandments
A summary of the last 7 commandments
All of the above
(see Lev 19:18; Rom 13:8-10; Lk 10:26-28)
7. How many commandments do you have to keep to get to heaven by being good
Only number 1
51%
Over 90%
100%
(See James 2:10-11, Gal 3:10-12, Romans 2:12-13, 3:9-10, 19-20)
8. Which commandment showed Paul that he was a sinner needing to be saved by Jesus?
1
5
7
10
(See Romans 7:7-25)
9. Which commandments can you break with your mouth closed, your empty hands firmly placed in your pockets, when you are by yourself in your own house?
1
6 and 7
10
All of the above
You can’t break commandments that way.
(see Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28)
10. The 10 commandments were given …
So we can know that we are sinful
As a cane bearing school teacher to drive us to Jesus Christ
To show us what God loves and hates
All of the above
(see Romans 3:20; Galatians 2:16, 3:24)
First Commandment
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.’ (Exodus 20:1-3, Deut 5:6-7 NIV)
The Context
These 10 commandments were given to Israel. They are not given directly to us. We are not Israelites and do not live under God in the same way. However, the God we worship, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is the God who revealed himself as YHWH in the Old Testament. We therefore need to pay careful attention to what he said.
First, rescue
The first 19 chapters of Exodus are about how YHWH rescued Israel. YHWH rescued Israel because he loved them. Israel didn’t deserve to be rescued. In fact, they were serving the Egyptian gods. The 10 commandments were really how the people of Israel could live as YHWH’s special people, and return his love.
Then, response… Israel’s Constitution
The 10 commandments were not just a personal moral rule; they were both the Constitution and the Criminal Law. They set the standard for a people who worshipped a holy God.
The Command
The commandment is a bit like a marriage promise. Forsaking all other gods, Israel was to be a One-God nation. They were to be faithful to YHWH. Now, this would prove very difficult. And individually, the command involved a commitment to be a 'one-God' man or woman. Just like you and I find it hard to keep our eyes where they should be at the beach, Israel found it hard to not lust after other gods. All the other nations around Israel had their gods. They promised health, wealth, sex, and pleasure. Worship in their religions meant there was sex with shrine prostitutes, and all kinds of fun stuff. In comparison, worshipping YHWH might have seemed unexciting, or boring.
Faithfulness, not Fantasies, Fancies or Figments
But this was a loving command because other gods don’t exist. And because those things wreck life now. They were a continually lust for unreality By chasing these other gods, the people were chasing fantasies and figments.
God is Jealous.
But the command also reflects the fact that God is jealous. He doesn’t want to share his glory with any other so called god!
Exodus 34:14 Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
Deuteronomy 32:16-17 16 They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols. 17 They sacrificed to demons, which are not God-- gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear.
Ezekiel 23:7-11 7 She [Jerusalem] gave herself as a prostitute to all the elite of the Assyrians and defiled herself with all the idols of everyone she lusted after. 8 She did not give up the prostitution she began in Egypt, when during her youth men slept with her, caressed her virgin bosom and poured out their lust upon her. 9 "Therefore I handed her over to her lovers, the Assyrians, for whom she lusted.
God would not tolerate having his bride, Israel, continually commit adultery. So he punished her by letting her be punished by the nations whose gods they wanted., like Assyria and Babylon.
What gods are we tempted to serve?
Religious God replacements
The gods of other religions
We might be tempted to serve the gods of other religions. Don’t think this can’t happen in Australia. I was walking down the main street of Hurstville and some lovely gentle looking man with a flower offered me the opportunity to burn some incence before a Buddah and to say a prayer there in front of the statue. Oh how nice and inclusive. Oh how deadly!!!
1 Corinthians 10:20-22 20 No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons… you cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons. 22 Are we trying to arouse the Lord's jealousy?
The god of Islam has no son. He is not love in eternity. They think it blasphemy to think of God as three persons but one God. He needed to make the world to love. Is this the same god as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? No, so we must not say Allah is the same as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
A different Jesus
Or we might be tempted to worship a different Jesus. There are many different Jesus’ out there.
* The fluffy Santa Clause Jesus, gentle Jesus meek and mild, who never says anyone is wrong.
* The Jehovah’s Witness Jesus, who is an angel, not God.
* The Mormon Jesus, whose brother is the devil, and who is the product of God having sex with Mary.
* The Jesus of Islam, who didn’t die on the cross and didn’t rise.
* The Jesus of Judaism, who died but didn’t rise.
* The Da Vinci code Jesus, who marries Mary Magdelene and has children.
2 Corinthians 11:2, 4 2 I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him… . 4 For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.
We must accept the Jesus of the Apostles, of Peter and of Paul. There is no other Jesus that we can trust.
Angels
We might be tempted to worship angels. As our society gets more and more into the new age, they will want to see angels. Now, seeing an angel might sound nice, but people who see them fall down as if dead. So I don’t particularly want to see one. Even John the Apostle, who really saw an angel, was tempted to worship the angel.
Revelation 19:10 10 At this I fell at his feet to worship him [an Angel]. But he said to me, "Do not do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! (cf Rev 22:8-9; Colossians 2:18)
Even if you see an amazing, mighty being like an angel, keep your feet. He is a fellow creature, made by God to serve you. Don’t worship him.
Saints
Some people of course venerate dead holy people, the saints. Some pray to them, asking for things. Some make statues of them to kneel before. Chinese people often worship ancestors. But dear brothers, we are Christian. We don’t worship men, especially dead ones.
Acts 14:11,14 11 When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, "The gods have come down to us in human form!" 14 But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: 15 "Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you.
Creation
Some people worship the creation. Star wars and George Lucas promoted the idea of pantheism. Everything is God. We serve the world -- mother nature – and that is our religion. That’s what the Jedi do. But this is a mistake.
Romans 1:25 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-- who is forever praised.
Family
And some people say that their religion is their family. But anything that we serve above and beyond God is a false god. So even our precious families we can treat as gods.
Matthew 10:37-38 [Jesus said] 37 "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38 and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (compare Luke 14:26-27)
Non-religious God replacements
Living in Australia, as we do, we might be tempted to hedonism, serving the senses. Such worship has various guises.
Praise of people
We might be tempted to seek the praise of other people. Perhaps re you still waiting for your father’s ‘Well done’, or wanting to contradict the voice in your head, 'I knew you would NEVER make something of yourself.' We can long, not unreasonably, for the love and respect of you wives, the honour of .our children, or the glory of our peers. Again, this is not wrong in and of itself, and they are good things. But it is our attitude to them, and what we are prepared to do to get them, that turn them into gods. We need to please God not to seek the honour and pleasure of men. As 1 Thessalonians 2:6 says, 6 We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else. (Compare Romans 2:29; John 12:43)
Money
Jesus is very clear that money is a replacement God, Matthew 6:24:
"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."
Power and influence
2 Corinthians 12:9-11 9 But he [Jesus] said to me [Paul], "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Sex (Eph 5:5; Col 3:5)
I think of a number of men who opted for sex rather than God. They understood the good news of Jesus. But they thought they would leave their wives, because Jesus wasn’t looking after their needs. Friends, they made sex their god. And this is such an easy one for us to fall into.
1 Corinthians 6:13 - 7:1 The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. … 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? …. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. 19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
Peace, quiet and comfort
This is something that so many of us want. I just want to have my family peaceful and quiet. I don't want to have fights. I want to have comfort. Jesus didn’t get that sort of easy, comfortable life, and nor does he promise it to us.
Luke 12:51-52 51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. 52 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three.
Diversions: sports, hobbies
1 Corinthians 15:29-35 29 If the dead are not raised at all, … why do we endanger ourselves every hour?... 32 If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." 33 Do not be misled: "Bad company corrupts good character." 34 Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God -- I say this to your shame.
Q. How can we serve the one true God?
A. By honouring Jesus Christ.
God says he will not share his glory with another. Yet he shares his glory with Jesus. Why? Because Jesus is not another. Father and Son are one. Together with they Holy Spirit, Father and Son are God, the divine 'we' who made us in his image.Because the Father loves the Son, it honours the Father to honour the Son.
John 5:22-28 22 Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him. 24 "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. 25 I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.
Philippians 2:9-11 9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Acts 4:12 12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."