Episode 52: 7/1/09

Readings:

Psalm 53
Deuteronomy 13:1-11
2 Corinthians 7:2-16
Luke 17:20-37

Sermon:

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.
Deuteronomy 5: 6-7

How important is the First Commandment? For many of us, it kind of gets jumbled up with the others of the first four commandments describing our duty to God, before we get to the seemingly more relevant ones, like not cheating or stealing or killing. But to God, it was so important that not only are we expected to die rather than submit to false gods, but we are also expected to fight to defend the community of faith against them.

In today’s Old Testament reading we see God warning the people of Israel against being tricked or seduced into the worship of false gods. He warns them that even if a person claiming to be a prophet produces miraculous signs but does so in the name of another god, that false prophet must be put to death. And even if those nearest and dearest to them try to lead them astray, they must put aside all pity and compassion and cast the first stone, putting to death any who would introduce false gods into the community of worship.

To our modern ears this sounds harsh and barbaric, reinforcing the stereotypes of the Lord as a God of wrath and vengeance, eager to smite and slaughter. How can we reconcile this with a God of mercy and compassion, a God who desires not the death of the wicked?

It may be helpful to compare the First Commandment with the First Amendment to the US Constitution, the linchpin on which all that follows must depend for support. Without the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech and freedom of conscience, none of the other articles in the Bill of Rights would have any basis to stand on. All of the other rights would be meaningless if we could be compelled to concur with that which is morally abhorrent to us, or be forced to remain silent in the face of tyranny. These fundamental rights are so important to us as a nation that we are willing to fight and die to defend them from our enemies.

Likewise, the First Commandment is the cornerstone on which all the other laws are built, the vital piece without which everything else would collapse. Without it, all the other commandments would become at best helpful suggestions for a peaceful life, at worst cynical rules to be manipulated for the benefit of tyrants and dictators.

The Lord gives us a clue to the importance of this first commandment by His repeated reminders that He is the God who delivered His people from the land of Egypt, from the hands of slavery. It was He who delivered the Israelites from hundreds of years of oppression and persecution, not any of the pantheon of Egyptian gods they learned to pray to during their captivity. Even after witnessing the Lord’s miraculous intervention on their behalf, it was a constant temptation for the Israelites to revert to the worship of false gods and idols. Perhaps this was meant as a gesture of independence, but it always ended up with the same result, with them being dragged back into slavery and bondage.

During the period of the Judges, a time when “every man did what was right in his own eyes,” time and time again the children of Israel would be tempted to trade their one true God for the more trendy gods of their Canaanite neighbors, gods like Baal and Molech who offered the “freedom” to sacrifice their children or serve as temple prostitutes. And time and time again those Canaanite neighbors would overpower and oppress the Israelites until they were forced to cry out to the true God for deliverance once more.

In the time of the Kings, we see Solomon and his successors making political marriages with pagan brides who brought their idols with them and made the worship of false gods the centerpiece of sophisticated court life, culminating with the evil reign of Ahab and Jezebel. The prophets sent by the Lord to warn the kings and bring them back to the worship of the true God were slaughtered, while the people suffered increasing oppression and cruelty, both from their own rulers and from the foreign conquerors who swept them away into exile.

As it was then, as it is now . . .

During the past century we witnessed unspeakable brutality and disregard for human life on a massive scale, as the Communists and Nazis sought to establish themselves as secular gods replacing the one true God. In the name of freedom they murdered millions of their own citizens and wreaked havoc on the world as they sought to erase the image of God from mankind and impose their own cruel vision of man as merely a slave subject to the whims of a powerful leader.

As we have come only too well to know, without the firm foundation of belief and faith in the one true God who guarantees our true freedom, all the other commandments and laws are merely cynical words used by the wicked to trap and persecute the weak and helpless. Whether this is done by totalitarian regimes that turn children against their parents and neighbors against each other, or by religious extremists who seek to enforce total submission to their agendas by invoking the name of God, the result is always the same, slavery and bondage and hopeless captivity.

Does this mean that we are to kill our neighbors or family members who are non-Christians, or Christians of a different denomination? No, of course not. The pages of history are splattered with the blood of those persecuted and murdered in the name of God. Our Savior came not to bring death but to bring life, and we who are His disciples must show His love and compassion, even to those we consider at best misguided or at worst as false prophets. But we must hold fast to our own faith, never allowing ourselves to be swayed by either threats or by sentimental appeals to our sense of love and tolerance.

We have a duty to defend the truth of the true God, the only God, the God who brings freedom and dignity and eternal salvation to a lost world. We are commanded by Our Lord to love even our enemies and to pray for them, even those wicked tyrants who set themselves up as gods. But we don’t have to let them win, and with God’s help, they won’t.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.