No Other Gods [Exodus 20:2-3]

Why would a slave go back to their abusive master? Why do women stay with husbands who treat them like dirt? Why do we stay in jobs where we are miserable and underappreciated? Why do people sometimes move backwards? When I think about the civil war, and the emancipation proclamation - all those slaves suddenly were free men. In my head they’re standing in a field, maybe they’ve got a hoe or a rake or something, and a man rides by calling out “you’re free!” and in a moment they drop their tools, and walk out of that slavery into freedom and a new life! It’s always really powerful in movies, the hero comes over the hill (always carrying a kid on their shoulder) and they’ll look out over the rolling fields and watch the sun rise over a new world, and it fades to black and we roll credits. But what happens in the real world? What happens the next day? When a slave is freed - what happened the next day? Where did they go? What did they do? In the beginning they were promised land, but President Andrew Johnson returned the land to white southerners, and most freed slaves were penniless, illiterate. Mississippi created the notorious Black codes, sort of the precursor to Jim Crow. You might expect freed slaves to simply walk away and never look back, but the truth of what happened was that a lot of them ended up back on the same land, not because freedom didn’t matter, but because the systems surrounding them were engineered to make freedom unlivable without formation. They didn’t know how to live a different way, and the world was pressuring them and squeezing them, and so a lot of them simply slipped back into something that looked a lot like their former lives.

Why do we do that? Why do we slip back into old habits - especially when we hate those old habits? Maybe it’s not as extreme as slavery - but I think all of us have old habits we meant to leave behind. Maybe for you it’s shopping - spending money you don’t have on things you don’t need because it makes you feel better. Or overeating - there’s a reason we call it comfort food. Or maybe you had a goal - going to be productive, but then you ended up binging a show for hours and hours. Or maybe it’s a church thing - I’m going to be there every week, I’m going to give this much, I’m going to volunteer this often - but then we just slip back into old habits, even habits we hate. Why would a slave go back to their abusive master?

Today is the start of a brand new, summer long series - where we are going to be taking a deep dive into the ten commandments. And if you’d like to grab your bibles - we are going to be in Exodus, chapter 20. Now, if you’ve been around in this church for a while - you know that I’m partial to the NLT translation, it’s one of my favorites. But I thought for the summer I’d switch over to the NIV. We’re going to use the NIV for this series, which is the same translation as the one on the back wall. If you want the words to match exactly, I encourage you to grab one of the physical bibles on the back wall - or toggle your phone to the NIV, new international version. Exodus chapter 20, starts  in verse 1, [read v.1-2]. Now already, I’ve got to stop - before we get to the ten commandments, God reminds them of their slavery. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery - and that framework is super important. Now, that’s a pretty famous story - but I know not everyone is familiar with it. So let me give you the highlights. The people of Israel were slaves in Egypt for 400 years. Back in chapter 12, it tells us [read v.40-41]. 430 years, they were slaves in Egypt. Then Moses comes along, 10 plagues. 10 incredible miracles of God showing his power to Pharoah, finally after the last one - Pharaoh says, “go on, get out of here.” The Israelites leave Egypt, but get stuck at the Red Sea. [put up a picture of the path to Mount Sinai]. In chapter 14, Pharaoh is having second thoughts, so he brings his army to go get the Israelites - Moses uses his staff to part the Red Sea, the people walk across on dry land. These are some of the most famous, epic moments and miracles in the entire bible. Then they’re traveling in the desert,and in chapter 16 and 17, they need food and water - God provides water from a rock, manna falls from the sky, quail for meat. 

And then they get to Mount Sinai, and that’s where God gives them the ten commandments. But before he gives them the ten commandments, he reminds them of their slavery. I am the Lord, who brought you out of slavery. What I want you to see today is that the ten commandments is not a list of restrictions - of do’s and don’ts. The ten commandments are about how to LIVE as a free person. Israel was in slavery for four hundred years. That’s roughly twelve generations of slavery. That means that in the middle of that - there were people who had parents and grandparents and great grandparents who all lived their entire lives as slaves, and at the same time they had children, and grand-children and great grandchildren who all lived their entire lives as slaves. Slavery was all they had ever known for as long as anyone could remember. And you can pull the people out of the slavery, but how do you get the slavery out of the people? In our lives, when we have experienced trauma - it can be hard to move past. For example, if we have been abused in a loving relationship - it can be hard to believe in love again, even if we have gotten free of our abuser. If we were treated poorly at work, or by a police officer, or if we had a handy man rip us off on a construction project - it can be hard for us to trust the next time that comes up. And if that’s the way it is for us in our lives, with just a handful of bad experiences - with a lifetime of traumatic ripples, can you imagine what it must have been like for the Israelites. Former slaves. Did they DARE hope? Did they DARE believe? 

Sometimes when I read Exodus, I poke fun at the Israelites. These are people who witnessed some of the most obvious and impressive miracles in history - the ones we make movies about, and yet they continued to doubt, they continued to fear, they continued to try and run back to their slavery. And I used to make fun of that - “oh my gosh, if we saw the miracles they saw - I mean, if we saw the parting of the red sea - we would never doubt God’s love ever again” But as I think about it - I realized, this is not the obtuse forgetfulness of stupid people - this is a trauma response of abused slaves who never dared to believe in something better. The ten commandments are not just a list of restrictions, it’s not just a rule book - “don’t do this, or I’ll be mad at you.” No, these ten commandments, and all the rules that come after the first ten - they are God’s way of coming alongside broken people and leading them to healing. God doesn’t begin with demands, he begins with a story. He begins by giving them a new identity. You used to be a slave, but that is not going to be your identity anymore. I’m going to give you a new identity.

And I’ll be honest with you, I never thought about the ten commandments that way before - but once I saw it, I realised we love this trope as a movie. Even from back when I was a child -  [put jungle to jungle on the screen] Take someone from one world, [put george of the jungle on the screen] stick them suddenly into another world [put Jumanji on the screen] and see how they adapt. [barbie].  The fish out of water plot device is all around us! [put Thor, Elf, crocodile dundee]. The Israelites were slaves for so long, surrounded by powerful Egyptian culture for so long - how can they be expected to know how to survive as free people out there in the real world? And in almost every single one of those movies - there’s a point where things get really bad, and they want to go back. I need to go back to the jungle, I need to go back to barbie land, or asgard or the north pole or whatever. [put Elf “I’m sorry” pic up] Israel says, “we just want to go back to slavery” - it was terrible, but at least it was familiar. So let me ask you this - in your life, what is your egypt? What is the thing that you are tempted to go back to? What habit or life did you leave behind? God has a new life for you - offering you freedom from sin, but you just keep thinking, “I don’t belong here.” Don’t raise your hand - but how many of you have imposter syndrome in the church? The devil is whispering in your ear - well, you know everyone around you has this all figured out, everyone else is doing better than you, you belong in Egypt. This whole freedom thing? You could never make that work! Some of us have sat in these chairs for weeks, maybe even years and we have this deep down conviction, “I don’t belong here. I’m not one of the good kids, someday they’re going to figure out that I’m messed up and then it’ll all come screeching to a halt.” I need you to hear that that is a lie. Every single one of us has an Egypt that we struggle with. And even if we have lived in the light of God’s grace for years - Egypt’s hooks go deep. And if you feel that way, I want you to realize that MOST of us around the room feel the exact same. You are not alone - a lot of us have the same insecurity. We look at the life God wants us to live, we look around at this amazing church family and we think, “I’m not good enough for this.” We look at God’s love and we think, “I don’t deserve that. I should go back to Egypt.” If you’re in here this morning thinking that, I need you to know that you are not alone. Even I am up here waiting to be discovered as an imposter. I’m not some great pastor, some visionary leader - I’m just a goofball who loves Jesus and tries his best. And if you love Jesus and want to try your best - then this is exactly where you belong. God comes alongside the traumatized former slaves and says, “I have something better for you - you’re never going back to Egypt, instead let me show you how to live FREE.”

Back in Exodus, verse 3, [read it]. No other gods before me. That’s the first commandment. God’s people had just crossed the Red Sea, left behind all the familiar struggles, and were now in this new land with new problems. Now, you all know how it works, if there is a rule, if there is a sign up on the wall - that means there is a story. Someone did something that caused that sign to be put up. And if we remember that the ten commandments are not about a list of restrictions, but they are actually designed to help God’s people figure out how to live free - then we can assume - if the first commandment is “no other gods” - we’re about to meet some other gods! So let’s meet the gods. There’s two primary gods that the Israelites were about to have to deal with. First was this guy Baal. [put picture on the screen]. I found this little statue, an idol image of Baal, that they would have set up and prayed to - but I don’t think that really gives us the right sense - because this little guy looks a little bit like an anorexic lawn gnome. [put up artist rendering] But this image is a little closer to how they viewed Baal. This is just an artist rendering, but I think you get the idea. He was this powerful god of weather and financial success. People would pray to him so their crops would flourish and they would have lots of wealth. And the second god that Israel would have to deal with was this lady Asherah. [put up a picture of a statue of Asherah]. She was the goddess of sex, the goddess of romance, reproduction. Full transparency, I had to be very selective in picking a picture that would be appropriate for a Sunday morning. Most of the statues of this lady, ah - um, emphasized her feminine traits. This artist rendering is helpful [put up the picture]. These are the gods that Israel was about to meet. They were moving into a new land where every village would have some sort of shrine or homage to Baal and Asherah. They were about to face significant peer pressure to worship and honor and serve these gods, and so the God of Israel says, “no other gods.” 

But here’s what I want to show you - Baal was the god of finances, weather, success. Asherah is the goddess of fertility, sex, romance. Now think about this for a moment - are those things still important in your life, today? [pause] I think we make a mistake when we think of “other gods” as features of the past. We look at these goofy statues and think, “look how those silly primitive people worshipping a hunk of stone or metal, I would never do that!” But the truth is - everything they were worshipping is STILL a temptation for us to worship in the modern world! Maybe we stopped worshipping statues, but we never stopped worshipping what they represent. 

I actually learned this a few months ago - do you guys remember the old song “I lift my eyes up to the mountain”? If you’ve never heard it - there’s an old worship song that goes, “I lift my eyes up, to the mountain - where does my help come from?” And I was studying a thing on the Psalms, which is where that verse comes from, in Psalm 121 and apparently that line means something significant. When the Israelites moved into Canaan, if you looked out over the landscape, on the tops of all the hills or mountains - you would see shrines. The people would build shrines to Asherah or Baal or whoever and put them up on the highest place they could. And so the line is literal, imagine a person from Israel looking up, and there’s a shrine over on that hill with Asherah, and there’s a shrine over on that other hill to Baal - and the question is, “Where does my help come from?” Which one of these gods will save me? And I think you and I do the same thing today - when we are going through a hard time, we wonder - who is going to save me? Is it going to be my bank account that saves me? Or is romance or sex going to save me? Is fame or success going to save me? Is it going to be my status or my family or my own will, and hard work and grit that are going to save me? Where does my help come from? But check it out, in Psalm 121, the very next verse. [read v.1-2] Our help is not going to come from Asherah or Baal, it’s not going to come from your money, your job - it’s not going to come from sex or kids or being super popular on social media. It’s going to come from God, and that’s why God teaches us “no other gods.” He’s not trying to restrict us, he’s trying to steer us to the only thing that can actually help us live a fulfilling life.

Jesus actually talked about this in Matthew chapter 22. You might have heard the story before - these guys approach Jesus, and they ask him, “Okay, Jesus - since you’re so smart, what is the greatest commandment?” And Jesus responds, in chapter 22, verse 37 with, [read v.37-39]. And that’s a pretty famous line, maybe you’ve heard that before -  but what I want to zero in on is the very next verse, verse 40, [read v.40]. Everything God wants us to do, everything God has outlined for us - everything we need to figure out, is absolutely contained in those two laws. Love God, Love neighbor. And here’s what I want you to pull from that, Freedom begins with loving God. He laid it down all those years ago at Mount Sinai to help his people rebuild their lives after slavery - but it works in your life too. All of us have an egypt, all of us have a slavery - a thing in our past, or maybe in our present that’s got a grip on us. An identity that God wants to help us move past - and that freedom begins with loving God. Maybe for some of you this morning, you have a trauma in your past. Someone did something horrible to you, maybe it was violent, maybe it was emotional, maybe it was psychological - maybe it was all of that and more. But freedom from that Egypt begins with loving God. Or for some of you - it’s a good thing that’s gotten twisted. Your pride in your job has turned into arrogance. Your success has turned into selfishness. Your love has turned into lust. Good things… twisted. Whatever it is in your life, your freedom from that Egypt begins with loving God.

You see, the good news that scripture has for us today is that God teaches us how to live free. We spend so much of our life running back towards the bad habits that hold us down, but God is giving us the framework for a life well lived. As we get into this series, all summer we’re going to look at God’s guidelines for living free and what I hope you’ll see is that - He’s not trying to restrict you, he’s trying to help you live into your new identity as a free person. One of my favorite things in life is cheering people on when they are trying to live a healthier life. Sometimes I’ll go to the gym, and I’ll see the super fit guys - they’re like this perfect physical specimen, and I’m thinking, “What are you doing here? You’re all done. Move over, make way for us flappy people.” If I’m in the car, and I see a fit person running - I just kind of shrug. Nothing wrong with it, but if I see an overweight person out jogging - that’s a hero. I will literally cheer, out loud in the car. And there’s this guy Taylor Reed, whose journey has just been incredible. He started at almost 600 pounds, and he’s down to under 300 and still dropping. But one thing he talks about is how much freedom his new life has. He could barely move when he was at his largest, but then he could walk short distances with a walker. Then he could walk with just a cane. Then he could walk unaided. And he talks about how much freedom he has regained now that he’s living a healthier life. Now you could look at his life and say, “oh man - he has such restrictions, so many rules. He’s watching what he eats, he’s exercising more, he’s getting regular sleep - if you focus on the restrictions you miss what those boundaries have unlocked for him. By living inside the boundaries of healthy living that his loved ones have set for him - his freedom is growing, not shrinking. It was the same for the Israelites - stepping into their new life as free people, no longer slaves. 

It is the same for you, here today - loving God leads to freedom. Think for just a moment about your Egypt. You were never a physical slave - but you have been a slave to sin. Whether it’s greed, pride, lust, envy - pick your flavor of slavery - we all have something. There is an old life of fear and insecurity, a life of abuse and pain - and God wants you to move into something better. He wants you to live FREE from sin. And it can be scary - to walk alongside God and to try to live a righteous life. Building a better life is harder. It would be easier for you to go back to your sin. It would be easier for you to go back to familiar pain, back to comfortable brokenness. But today is not a day for retreating. Today is a day for victory. For stepping boldly into a new life. Because just like the Israelites all those years ago, you have a God who has brought you out of Egypt. You have a God who has made you for better things.

Back in 2006, there was a fascinating study done by an architecture student on preschool children. Basically they built two identical or comparable playgrounds at two schools - one had no fence, no boundaries of any sort. Big open grassy area surrounding the playground, no limitations. The second school had a completely enclosed in yard - same size, but with a fence. Turns out, when there is no fence - the children stayed next to the school building. They explored less. They ventured out less. But where there was a fence, the kids filled the entire school yard. Knowing they were safe inside the boundaries actually allowed them more freedom, allowed them more confidence and ultimately more joy. That’s what the ten commandments does for us. That’s what God has for us.

And so now that we understand how God is trying to come alongside us, to walk with us in our brokenness and lead us into healing and a new life - we’re going to open up some time for prayer. I just want to give you space to throw down your idols. Throw down your false gods, your asherahs your baals. I want you to sit and identify your Egypt. What is the sin in your life you need to leave behind. I want you to take that thing that used to have control of your life, that used to have control of your identity - and I want you promise God, “I’m never going back.” I will have no other gods. And after you have prayed to leave behind your Egypt, after you have thrown down your idols - I ask that you rise. Stand with us and sing as a free man, sing as a free woman - ready to face the future unafraid. Pray with me, “God I want you to be the one and only. God I see what you are doing in my life - I see that you have given me teachings for how to live in freedom, for how to grow into this new life that I have, free from sin. God I never want to go back. God I never want to go back. God i never want to worship anything except you. I never want anything to have a place in my life that only you deserve. Nothing else in my life is worthy. Only you, Jesus. Only you are worthy of my worship. Spirit I ask that you come into this place and show us our Egypt, show us our sin - and please, help us leave it behind. In your name, Amen.”