1293. Worshipping Only the One Living and True God

Welcome to The Daily Platform. Our program features sermons from chapel services at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Every day, students are blessed by the preaching and teaching of the Bible from the University Chapel Platform. Today on The Daily Platform, we're continuing a series called Our Great God.

Today's message will be preached by seminary professor, Dr. Greg Stikes. The title of his sermon is, Worshipping Only the One Living and True God. This is the topic of worshipping God alone in this series.

And so I've titled this, Worshipping Only the One Living and True God. I'm going to invite you to open your Bibles or find on your device Matthew chapter 4. And if you'd like, you can get a head start and go to Deuteronomy chapter 6.

We'll be there as well. But in Matthew chapter 4 verse 8, we are jumping right into the middle of Matthew's story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. The devil has already tried to deceive Jesus twice and failed. But now Matthew says, again the devil taketh him to an exceeding high mountain and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. And saith unto him, all these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then Jesus saith unto him, get thee hence Satan.

Which is an old way of saying, get out of here. For it is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve. I want you to notice three things about Jesus' response. First, Jesus as the obedient son of God, having taken on human flesh, demonstrates for us who follow him how many supreme objects of worship God wants us to have. Can you tell how many?

I'll give you a hint. It's less than two. Because when Satan wants Jesus to worship him, he's not saying Jesus has to worship Satan alone. In fact, he's not even saying that Jesus has to continue to worship him. He just has to bow down and worship him one time and Jesus never hesitates.

He says no. There is only one God who is to be worshiped at any time and he is the one living and true God. And if you are a believer in Jesus Christ this morning, there should be no question in your mind on this subject.

Jesus has settled the issue for us right here. Second, I want you to notice that Jesus says, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve. Notice the word worship and the word serve go hand in hand. It's seen that way often in the Bible.

Sometimes the terms are used interchangeably. Because to worship something and to serve something is a very similar idea. Do you know what worship is? Worship is simply the response that comes from our hearts whenever we encounter something we think is truly awesome or amazing. That's what worship is.

And we are created by God for it. That's the reason that there is this place in the Grand Canyon that's actually called Ooh Ah Point. Anybody ever been to Ooh Ah Point? Some of you?

Yeah? You're walking on the Kaibab Trail and you come across this sign that says Ooh Ah Point. What do you think people say when they see that?

Are they like, what is that, an ancient Navajo name? What do you think that means in English? No, everybody gets it because we are all created to worship. Ooh Ah is a universal response. We're wired to say whoa or wow or maybe something moves us to a contemplative silence. And then those things or people that we worship, we want to experience that again. So we keep coming back to them and we think about them when we're supposed to be doing something else and we talk about them and we rejoice with others who are worshiping the same thing or we rush back to them as soon as we can. In other words, we serve the objects that we worship with our loyalty and devotion and our fullest attention. So what then is Christian worship? Christian worship is the response that comes from our believing heart when we encounter the one living and true God. It's what happens when we ooh and ah at him, when we find ourselves stepping back in awe and wonder and thanksgiving, singing to him and enjoying him. And we find that we want to get back to God again and again and serve him with our obedience and devotion and that we love gathering with others who want to worship him and talk about him and our worship service. And for Satan to suggest that he himself ought to take that place in Jesus' heart even for a moment is deeply offensive to the starving savior. For he knows that there is no person in the entire universe who deserves that kind of admiration and devotion. Every other object of worship or devotion, if it even should be worshiped in our lives in the first place, takes a second place to God, a distant second, a far distant second. Third, I want you to notice that Jesus says, it is written that thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only.

It is written where? Because a lot of you know, studying this story of Jesus' temptation that Jesus quotes scripture every time he says no to Satan. But what you might not know is that every time Jesus quotes scripture, he always quotes it only from one section of one book of the Bible, the book of Deuteronomy. Once from Deuteronomy 8, twice from Deuteronomy 6. Why Deuteronomy?

Well, it's because Deuteronomy is the place where Moses is having a long talk with the Israelites as they're standing on the border of the promised land about to enter. After 40 years of wilderness wandering and Moses is reminding them of everything they went through during those years and what God had taught them. God had used the manna to teach them about obedience. God had used water shortage to teach them not to put God to the test.

And God had taught them on various occasions not to worship other gods, but to worship only the one living and true God. So why does Jesus go in his mind to these scriptures in Deuteronomy? Because Jesus has gone into the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted by Satan to sin. Just like his ancestors, the Israelites had gone into the wilderness for 40 years and were tempted. And Satan attacked Jesus with temptations similar to the ones that the Israelites experienced.

Make these stones bread. Throw yourself down and tempt God. And now fall down and worship me. So Jesus in a real sense is reacting, reenacting the wilderness temptations. Only there's one big difference here between Jesus in the wilderness and the Israelites in the wilderness. Where the Israelites had failed to honor and obey God when they were tempted to sin, Jesus succeeded in staying faithful to God and obeying him. He stood against the temptation and said no every time, determining to obey the Father's will. So when Satan tempted Jesus just one time to fall down and worship him, Jesus said get lost. There is only one person worthy of worship in the entire universe and it is not you.

It is the Lord, the one living and true God. But sadly that is not how the Israelites often responded when faced with the temptation to worship someone other than God. You see, when the Israelites had been living as slaves in Egypt, they had been immersed in a culture that worshipped many gods. Ra, the god of the sun, Thoth, the god of the moon, Atum, the god of creation, Set, the god of storms and disorder, Osiris, Hathor, Isis, Newt, Bat, Horus, and nearly 50 more that we know of. But when God sent Moses to Pharaoh, he commanded him, let my people go. That's usually where the phrase ends in our minds, but he actually said more than that. Let my people go that they may serve me.

In other words, that they may worship me in the wilderness. And God led his people out of Egypt after bringing ten plagues upon the land of Egypt to loosen Pharaoh's grip. These were not just random plagues, I hope you know that. Each of the ten plagues demonstrated that God alone is the one true God. Because each plague was a direct attack on a major Egyptian deity or panoply of deities. When God turned the Nile, the blood, it showed that the Pharaoh and the god of the water, Hapi, were no gods at all. When God sent painful boils upon the Egyptians, it was an attack on the goddess Isis and the god Horus, both thought to be gods of healing. When God caused palpable darkness to fall over the land, it showed that Ra, the sun god, and Thoth, the moon god, were no gods. And we could go on, but the point is, when God leveled Egypt with plagues, it was not merely to show that God is of infinite power and control, it was also to show that any other competitor god was only a product of pagan imagination, fashioned from a fallen heart of a people who are created in the image of God to worship, but led by their pride and their sinful desire to replace worshipping the one living and true God with something far less significant.

But living among them, the Israelites' imaginations were greatly impacted by the worldview shaped by the supposed existence of many gods. So, God brought them out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, to the foot of Mount Sinai, to establish his covenant with them, to officially make them a nation. And he says to them in Exodus chapter 19, Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, for all the earth is mine.

And these chosen people, you know what they said in Exodus 19? They all said, yes God, whatever you say we will do, we will obey you, we will worship you alone. So God entered into a covenant with his people. And then God took Moses to the top of Mount Sinai to give Moses two things.

One, he gave him the Ten Commandments. Do you remember the first of the Ten Commandments? Thou shall have no other gods before me. In other words, you will not worship any other gods besides me. That's the force of the shall not in Hebrew, by the way. It's not you shall not, it's you will not.

Like your mom or dad might have said to you when you were growing up. You will not worship any other gods besides me. That was the foundation of all of the other commandments.

Worship the one living and true God. But God also gave to Moses something else on top of that mountain that a lot of people don't think about. God also gave Moses the blueprints for a tabernacle that was specifically designed for the worship of this one living and true God. In fact, most of the book of Exodus is about this tabernacle system of worship. But even while Moses was at the top of the mountain receiving these brilliant instructions for the right way to worship alone, this one living and true God, already at the foot of the mountain, Israel was practicing false worship with an idol, the golden calf. You remember what happened? Moses didn't come back from the top of the mountain for a long time.

The people started to panic, wondering where he was. You know how long he was on the mountain? Exodus 24, 18 says he was on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights. Do you know that's exactly how long Matthew says Jesus fasted in the wilderness in Matthew 4, 2? 40 days and 40 nights.

That's very curious, isn't it? And after those 40 days and 40 nights of fasting, Jesus proclaimed to the devil, you shall worship the Lord God only and serve him only. But after 40 days and 40 nights waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain, do you know what the people of Israel said? They said to Moses' brother, Aaron, who was in charge, up, make us gods which shall go before us. For as for this Moses, the man that brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.

Do you see their first knee-jerk solution to what they perceived to be a big problem? Make us gods. Make us gods. At least they used the right verb. Because if the Lord is the one living and true God, any other god that we have in our lives has to be made. It has to be manufactured, created by human ingenuity. How deceived must you be to make your own god and then bow down to it and say, wow, you are my god?

But that's what they did. Aaron said, bring me all your gold earrings. And they built a big fire and melted the golden earrings. And Aaron fashioned the molten gold into a shape of a young bowl.

It was a bowl made out of earrings. And Aaron said, here are your gods. And they began to feast to this bowl.

And they turned the banquet into a lewd display of drunkenness and immorality. They were simply mimicking the Egyptian rituals of worship that they had seen in Egypt. And before it was over, God had disciplined his people for this act of false worship. And 3,000 people died that day who had worshiped that young golden bowl made out of earrings. You would think that the Israelites would learn their lesson right then and there.

But idolatry dies hard in our hearts once it has taken root. And despite the severity of that judgment later in their wanderings, the Israelites began to worship the god Baal at the city of Peor. And 24,000 Israelites died from a plague that God sent as punishment. And here, once again, Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 6 admonishes them. They're about to enter the promised land.

And they're not going to be living in isolation. Even after they drive out their enemies from the land, they will be surrounded by other people groups who worship a whole array of various gods. And their mission will be to hold forth the one living and true God who is alone to be worshiped. But you cannot be a witness to one living and true God when you are at the same time embracing other gods, other objects of worship. So Moses warns them in Deuteronomy 6 14, you shall not go after other gods, the gods of the people which are around you. But if you know even a little of Israel's history, they did go after other gods of the surrounding nations.

The gods of the Philistines and the gods of the Ammonites and the Moabites and the Edomites and the Hittites and the Assyrians. They would start worshiping other gods. And by the way, it doesn't mean that they necessarily stopped worshiping the God of Heaven. Often they would simply add other cults, other objects of worship to their worship of God. But it was still a violation of the commandment number one. It is a failure to worship only the one living and true God.

It is a terrible sin against God. So God would discipline them and they would repent and worship God alone. Then a generation or two would pass and they would fall into worshiping false gods again. And the cycle goes on and on in the Old Testament.

In fact, if you trace the times of great joy and prosperity and the times of terrible sadness and suffering in the history of Israel, you will find that those rises and falls are basically tied to one thing. Whether they obeyed the commandment, you will not worship any other god besides me. And the crazy thing is, they would be doing so well and God would be blessing them abundantly and they would still go back into idolatry.

For example, under King David and then his son Solomon, the kingdom had turned from idolatry and had reached its greatest height in terms of wealth and prosperity and expansion and peace and international relations. But it all came crashing down because of this one particular sin. 1 Kings 11 begins, But King Solomon loved many foreign women.

And the fact that they were non-Israelite women was not the problem. The problem was that these women were devoted to false gods. And God had warned his people, If you give your heart to anyone who is worshiping another god besides me, that person will turn your heart away from worshiping only the one living and true God. Yet 1 Kings 11 says, Solomon clung to these in love. For it came to pass when Solomon was old that his wives turned away his heart after other gods. And his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as with the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milkom, the abomination of the Ammonites. Then did Solomon build a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and the hill that is before Jerusalem. And for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon.

And then the text goes on. In fact, the god Molech was a particularly gruesome abomination. Molech was a god to which you would sacrifice your children in the fire.

And this is mind-numbing to think how far we go away from God's holy will for our lives when we begin to make room for other gods besides him. Solomon built an altar upon which his own children, perhaps, could be offered to a false god by being burned alive in the fire. So the people followed their king, and Israel was once again plagued by the sin of not worshiping only the one living and true God, and he began to discipline his people.

The northern kingdom never came back. They went into Assyria by God's judgment because they would not repent of their idolatry, and later the single tribe of Judah in the south that was left was carried away by Babylon. So back to Deuteronomy chapter 6. Moses stands here exhorting the people who are about to enter the land, surrounded by foreign gods calling for their attention, leading them astray from the one living and true God, and Moses commands them in verses 5 and 6, Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. Now let's slow down for a second and think about this bedrock statement about our God. The mere fact that God is only one God, He's the only God that exists in three persons. He's the only God.

This alone has amazing implications for what we should believe about this God and how we should behave. For example, if God is the only God, then He's our only creator. And if He's our only creator, He's the only one who could have made us. And if He is the only one who could have made me, then He is the only one to whom I owe my life. And if He is the only one to whom I owe my life, my very existence, He's the only one who deserves my ultimate praise and affection. But for believers in Christ, God has done so much more than simply bring us into the world. He has brought us into eternity through the death and resurrection of His son Jesus Christ when we have placed our faith in Him.

He alone deserves any glory that we can give to another. That is why verse 5 follows logically from the theological truth that God is only one God. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might. In other words, love and worship Him and no one else. This is why God can make these intense and far-reaching claims about Himself. In Isaiah, for instance, He says, I am the Lord, that is my name, my glory I will not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.

Isaiah 44-6, Thus saith the Lord, the king of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and I am the last, and beside me there is no God. But here we are in the 21st century. We are not surrounded by the gods of the Canaanites or the Assyrians or those other nations. But I'll tell you what, the allure of other objects of worship has never been more alive in our culture. The attraction to devote ourselves primarily to something other than God is very real.

Something or someone has incredible appeal to us personally and keeps us coming back for more. Until we begin to serve this object of worship, devoting much of our time and attention to it, when we're not being forced by necessity to do anything else. And soon, like Solomon, we cling to our object of worship. And yet, the inspired word of God calls us to have no other gods besides the one living and true God. It means that you cannot love anything else more than God. That you cannot be devoted to or serve anything more than God. Maybe your lesser loves in your lives are sinful.

Maybe they're not. In fact, having a good lesser love can corrupt the believer's heart sometimes even more subtly. It's very easy to stop worshiping God and start worshiping his gifts. But as soon as you exalt a secondary love to a status of worship, you have sinned against the one living and true God who alone deserves our worship.

We might not perceive this as such a bad thing. Because after all, we are still giving God some of our worship. But you see, if God alone is to be our object of worship, he must be at the center of our world.

Our thinking, our love, our devotion. And if God is not at the center, it means we have put something else at the center in his place. Because we will worship something.

That is how God created us. We are worshippers at heart. But when we shift a peripheral love to the center, everything is off kilter. And what is worse, God himself becomes a peripheral, lesser love. And we are no longer measuring and evaluating our lesser loves by what God thinks about them. But we are evaluating whether God measures up to our lesser love.

Whether he is even as fulfilling or interesting to us. And we consider how menial and temporal and non-eternal some of our lesser loves actually are. Compared to the glory and majesty and beauty of God. God has, I think, every right to be morally outraged at some of the things we give our loves to. You see, no matter how good you think you are at living the Christian life, your plans, your activities, your decisions will never be right until your worship is right. This biblical truth that God is the only one who should be worshiped calls us to consider all of our lesser loves.

Loves that are not worthy, not as worthy as God. They tempt you, just like they tempted Jesus through the devil. I will give you things if you worship me.

I'll give you prosperity or popularity or pleasure or prestige or power or protection. Maybe those things are your object of worship. Do you crave them more than you crave God?

Because lesser loves call out to us. They want to subvert the place of God. But Jesus has already demonstrated how you should answer. No.

Get out of here. For it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. Some of us need to desperately shoot some of our lesser loves in the head and at least command them the same thing that Jesus said to the devil.

Idolatry dies hard in our hearts once it takes root. But by the grace of God through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can respond in the same way Jesus did and keep the only living and true God as the center of our worship and devotion. Father, give us your grace through the Spirit to worship you and you alone as you have commanded us. And we will give you the praise for all things in Christ's name. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by BGU Seminary professor Dr. Greg Stikes which is part of the series called Our Great God. Listen again tomorrow as we continue this series on The Daily Platform.