Let’s turn to our Bibles to Hosea chapter two. Hosea chapter two, verse two. So it’s appropriate as we’re going through Hosea since he covers all four commandments and violations of the first four commandments and others, by the way, but especially the first table of the law to cover those in separate sermons.
And so this evening I will have the first commandment in the church. Hosea chapter two, verse two, let us listen attentively to the word of God. Bring charges against your mother, bring charges for she is not my wife, nor am I her husband.
Let her put away her harlotries from her sight and her adulteries from between her breasts. Let us pray. And here, Lord, we read in such a graphic fashion your disdain and your hatred of violations of your law, especially the first table as it deals with you and your honor and who you are, God, and how the church of old here described as the mother of this current generation who has betrayed you in so many ways.
Lord, she has thrown off the covenant through her false worship, not just worship on the Lord’s Day of the Old Testament, the Sabbath, Saturday, but throughout the week, whenever they had feast days, new moons, and Sabbaths and her appointed feasts, there in verse 11, all described as hers and not yours. Our God and Savior made our days, that is the Lord’s Day, and times of worship not only on Sunday, but throughout the week, that is whenever we think specifically about you, talk about you, or pray to you and read of your word, that we would do so in accordance to your word with a heart and a love towards you, and that we would purify all these things in accordance to your word by the blood of Christ Jesus instead of mixing it with foreign influence as they did of old. Help us, God, we pray, to relearn, if need be, the first commandment and to follow this path by your grace upon us, amen.
The first commandment, as we know, is the greatest commandment. Upon it hinges all things here in the 10 commandments. Do you follow him? Do you follow other gods? And how do you know? And of course, one clue is your profession.
Do you confess Christ as your God and Savior? Another clue is an old adage, where your treasure is, there your heart will be. The first commandment is the greatest because it is a radical call to follow God no matter what. Will he be your treasure? Will he be your captain and master? Will he be your purpose in life? Will he be the love that drives your obedience? Israel was relearning this lesson during the time of the prophets.
Here in the book of Hosea, in particular, the problem had grown so deep and wide that the Lord, well, took his prophet and told him to marry an unfaithful woman, Gomer, as a public example to warn the rest of the Jews. He went one step further. He had children with her, and each kid had a special name to give further warning and a call to the apostatizing church of old.
To unpack this lesson for us today, I will use three points gleaned from the first commandment as summarized in the larger catechism, question 104. The first commandment, what are the duties required in the first commandment? The duties required in the first commandment are the knowing and acknowledging of God to be the only true God, okay, that makes sense, and our God, as people can say it’s the real God, but he’s not my God, I have another God, and to worship and glorify him accordingly by, and now we have a long list that covers one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and seven or eight lines of my 13 font, not even 12 font, here in my notes. By, how do we glorify and worship him? By thinking, meditating, remembering, highly esteeming, honoring, adoring, choosing and loving, desiring and fearing him, believing in him, trusting him, hoping, delighting, and rejoicing in him.
Being zealous for him, calling upon him, giving all praise and thanks. We heard about that this morning, and that in all things that we do, especially with respect to the creation, with word and prayer, they are sanctified with thanksgiving. And yielding all obedience and submission to him with the whole man, being careful in all things to please him, and sorrowful when in anything he is offended, and walking humbly with him.
From this fruitful list, I will go to three focuses here, to condense all this, as it were, in a simple way. Service to God, glorifying God, and loving God. Right, service to God, glorifying God, and loving God.
And I’m gonna do it in reverse order. I’m gonna talk about loving him, glorifying him, and giving service to him. You typically wanna end a sermon on the emphatic point, if possible.
And love would be very emphatic. But given this context here of this generation that mixed their worship, they weren’t like, we give up being Jews, the equivalent today would be, we give up being Christians, right? We don’t believe in the Messiah to come anymore, forget that, we’re just gonna be Egyptians, or we’re gonna be Assyrians. No, they still claim to be God’s people, right? They still claim to be followers of the Messiah to come.
The equivalent today would be like, we’re still Christians, oh, trust us. But they just took in all types of the religions and approaches, especially in the first table of the law, and mixed it in with God’s worship. Secretistic, right, as it’s called.
And under that guise, they’re like, sure, I love God. But their actions showed otherwise. So I wanna end the sermon on the service, the actions, right? So, the first point.
The Church Should Love God
You should love God. This is our motive, motivation. Exodus 22, which of course fits very well with anything in the Prophets, because all the Prophets are based upon the Exodus.
Often they warn of the people of God in the Old Testament, or encourage the people of God in the Old Testament with respect to the Exodus, what God had done for them collectively, and of course individually there. 1,200 years ago, or I guess 500, 600 years ago, it’s about 1,200, 1,300 there with Moses, about 900 with David, and this is about the 700s. Exodus 20, verse two.
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, right? And you shall have no other gods before me. The Old Testament motivation is God saved you from certain destruction in Egypt, and it applies, therefore, you ought to love him, and he should be no other god, because no other god has saved you, has done anything for you. You shall have no other gods before me.
That language there, of course, is a picture of something standing in the way of God. It’s a strong metaphor. Your vision is blocked.
Their vision is blocked. They no longer see the beauty of God and the greatness of the one who protected them generationally after generation here, since 1,300, 1,200 B.C. to 700 now B.C. Generation after generation of unfaithful men and women, and God is still with them, and they don’t want to submit and love him. And so this is about love here, this first point.
Love is the internal engine to drive you to heaven, as it were. It’s not enough to be commanded to serve God in one sense. It’s usually not enough to see the end goal.
What’s my vision of life? But the motivation there is to love him, to put him above all other gods is the emphasis. New Testament motivation, of course, is there as well. 1 John 4.10. God sent his only beloved son to you, therefore you should love him.
John, the apostle of love, just emphasizes over and over again of love, but love is here in the Old Testament as well. It’s assumed and applied often, but explicitly there as well. And in the first commandment, should have no other gods before me.
Why? Because you’re supposed to love me. Supposed to put me first. Supposed to glorify me.
That would be the second point, very close to the idea of love, of course, but different. It’s a different word, different idea. We cannot serve two masters, so Isaiah’s warning about idolatry here is to warn them about divided loves.
Idolatry, we read in the next question, so that was question 104, so question 105 of the larger catechism. Idolatry is defined as in having or worshiping more gods than one. So they would have God, and they would have yet another God.
God is a jealous God. Or any with or instead of the true God. The not having and avouching him for God and our God, the omission or neglect of anything due to him, required in his commandment, ignorance, forgetfulness, misapprehensions, false opinions.
There in forgetfulness, the reason why I quoted this, I’m not gonna go into all the details of the negative here, is the word forgetfulness. Remember I mentioned that last time in the sermon? One of the themes here in the book of Hosea is they have forgotten me. They’ve forgotten my law.
They’ve forgotten my grace. They’ve forgotten me. That is a sin.
It’s a violation of the first commandment. And unfortunately, it’s widespread in the American churches. False theology is a clear example of this.
We heard a little bit about that this morning, about those forbidding to marry and those arguing you’re supposed to abstain from certain foods because you’re supposed to be holy, like the Jews were perhaps, or the Gnostic approach, or the Roman Catholic approach to food, whatever the case is. That’s not just forgetfulness. It’s often ignorance, misapprehensions, false opinions.
These too are violations of the first commandment. And our love for God, we should have love for our neighbors and our, especially the household of faith, and help them, and we pray that they would help us. I’ve said this in my prayers a few times, you may recall, I mentioned, yes, we want visitors, we want people to join the church so we can help them, but we also want them to help us, to see our blind spots perhaps, to encourage us, give us strength, or whatever else is needed.
And so, with this widespread ignorance, I have not gone through the statistics. You’ve been here for a number of years, I’ve mentioned them a number of times, poll after poll, where they just don’t even understand that Jesus is God. People claiming, what are you? I’m an evangelical.
I’m a born again believer. And one of the questions, who is Jesus? They’re like, oh maybe he’s God, maybe he’s not, we’re not sure. The names are all confused now.
It’s so bad, I sent Tripp, a new study. Remember that, Tripp’s like, what? And where it’s the younger generation, some of you younger folks understand this, you’re growing up in a world that is more foreign to us. People will be asking American polls, the younger people especially, would say they’re Christian, but not Protestant.
Yeah, what? Because ignorance is growing. Ignorance is unfortunately growing. And it’s a, it’s a very mixed problem in many ways, what the origin of this is, but to the extent that it’s Christians, fellow Christians that you know at work, or in your life, or your family.
The zeal here I want you to have, as Hosea does, is for God’s glory, but for their good as well. You want them to avoid false worship, of being ignorant, of forgetfulness, of false opinions. And so here, this is for us to be humble, but at the same time zealous for God’s glory.
Why? You should serve him of course, and the motivation is love as well. And it’s not the only motivation, there’s all kinds of motivations mentioned in the word of God. It’s implicit elsewhere in the Bible, in the Old Testament.
For you were bought at a price, and therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s, implicitly behind all that, because you were bought with a price. That is you were saved, you were redeemed, you were protected. You’re gonna love that person.
You’re gonna thank that person. It’s not happened to anybody here that I’m aware of, but you know, you’re about to die, and drown, and someone rescues you. You’re gonna remember them to the day you die.
And you’ll probably be in contact with them. Can you give me your number please? Maybe you’ll put them in your will. This is 10 times more important, the saving of our soul.
And so when Paul talks about this in New Testament, you were bought with a price, therefore glorify God. Being bought with a price implies behind that, we gotta love him. But it’s explicit as we know.
In the Old Testament, Deuteronomy, three or four times there in the text, I’ve gone through Deuteronomy on Wednesday night. In the New Testament, I’ll quote this passage, so we have other passages in our minds as well. Luke 10, 27.
In Luke 10, 27 we read, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. Wait a minute pastor, you just quoted Jesus quoted in the Old Testament, I know. It’s quoted in Deuteronomy, the book of the law.
And the law talks about love. Do we love him enough to serve him? Do we love him enough to glorify him? To have no other gods before me, the first commandment, means to love God in all your life, particularly by making him your chief goal or end, to put him first, and thus to glorify God. That picture there on the second point of glorifying God, is a picture in this metaphor I’m using, motivation of love, and the goal is to glorify God.
The Church Should Glorify God
That’s our purpose in life. The first question in catechism, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. That’s the goal.
That’s the purpose. That’s the direction and the path we walk down as believers. We should glorify him.
Everyone needs a goal in life. We need direction, we talk about, and the greatest direction is God. First Corinthians 620, for you were bought at a price, as I read before, therefore glorify, there is explicit, glorify God in your body, in your spirit, which are gods.
Glorify, that word means to honor, to give high status, to enhance the reputation of God. The equivalent in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word is to give due weight. It’s a weighty matter.
It’s a serious matter for the world. When you give gifts to your friends, of course, it’s because you like them, I hope, or you love them. You don’t want to disappoint your friends.
You want to love your parents and not disappoint them either. In fact, all these are proper motivations and can be all done at the same time. You can love someone.
You can like someone. You can not want to disappoint them, all rolled up into one. But all of these are subservient and support the greater goal, which is to glorify God.
Glorify him in your love. Glorify him in your fear of him. Glorify him in your care for one another and all that you do.
That’s what the Bible means. It talks about honoring him in all things. It is, when you’re asked in the moment, why are you doing this? It should be because I want to glorify God.
It may not be the immediate purpose in the sense of what are you doing now? I’m working. I’m on my job. Please, you’re bothering me.
Get off the phone, right? But why are you working? Because God wants me to work. It’s the right thing and it glorifies him. So it’s an ultimate purpose.
We have all these secondary goals and purposes that should all line up with that great low star, the north star of our Lord and Savior to glorify him and enjoy him forever. It’s the final destination that determines all the travel, all the routes. We go different routes, too, in our Christian life.
A little bit here, a little bit there, but at the end of the day, it’s what? Points on the main path, which is to glorify God, to put him first, to honor him, to exalt him, even if it means debasing us. This should be your final goal in life, to work hard, to serve consistently, to teach truthfully, to be the best father, child, student, or neighbor. For its own end? No, it should never be simply for its own end.
Wealth shouldn’t be simply for its own end, but to a greater end or purpose or goal. Tie it to the glory of God Almighty. To have no other gods before him means not only to love him, but to glorify him.
And all that you do, loving and glorifying God, begins in the heart. This is another reason why I tie these things together this way. In love, in glorification, and lastly, of service.
Well, because what is in the heart should not stay in the heart. It should move out into our hands, into what we do in life. People claim, unfortunately, that others can be soft on the first commandment.
This is what’s happening here. They are making excuses. They are watering down the first table of the law, the first commandment, and the second commandment, and the third commandment.
Even the fourth commandment. They have her sabbaths and her appointed feasts. Not the Lord’s sabbath and the Lord’s appointed feast.
And they’re watering it down. They’re making excuses for one another. And the way they did it back then, it seems to be mostly because they were prosperous, as we saw a little bit earlier.
And God gave them so much. The linen, the fine linen, and the food and the like. And they said, because we are blessed, that we are special, we’re not doing anything wrong.
We’re doing just fine, thank you very much. Today, that may be the case as well in some places. But there’s another case, which is, people tend to, when it comes to gross, serious sins at times, I say tend, I’ve seen people do this.
How often, I don’t know. Enough that I’m gonna talk about it. They’ll excuse them by saying they mean well.
I went to that church, and their worship service was a rock concert. Well, but they meant well. Okay.
Well, I’m glad they meant well. But what saith the Lord, right? It’s a serious violation. Yes, love covers a multitude of sins, that’s clear.
But it doesn’t mean it covers all sins. That is, it’s a compassionate way of understanding, yes, there are lesser sins, and we cover them. We have compassion for one another, as Peter quotes the Proverbs there.
But there are serious enough sins, Paul himself mentions it, Peter mentions it. They all do, we know Christ does. If it’s serious enough, just simply saying, well, they meant well, is not sufficient anymore, is it? No.
And clearly here, with gross violations of God’s honor publicly, this is a known thing, not done in a corner, and it’s widespread, entire nation. No, they may, quote, mean well. I don’t know people’s hearts, and I may assume the best on some circumstances, but this and such serious matters, no.
And so the danger then is it becomes, it blinds people to false teachings and false practices, because they’re quick to just write it off as they meant well. If you love him, and you wanna honor him with all your heart and all your soul, you wanna honor him with your hands as well. And our actions.
Not just talk. And so that leaves us to the third point. You should serve God, that’s our method.
The Church Should Serve God
The motivation is love, the goal is to glorify God in all that we do, and the method is our actions. The things that we do, our service before him, before God Almighty. Now the first, that you should serve God through obedience, first thing, and then secondly, you should serve God through worship.
So through obedience, I mean, here, for example, then Jesus said in Mark 4 10, where Jesus is in the wilderness, he’s being tempted, and Jesus says to Satan, away with you, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only you shall, what? Serve. Him only you shall serve. That is to have duty, obedience towards him, usually specifically religious, but not exclusively.
In John 14 15, if you love me, keep my commandments. That’s one of the easiest ones to remember when you talk to fellow Christians who are confused about this. Well, Jesus is here to love us, he’s done away with the law.
So what are you talking about the law for? Well, because Jesus literally says, if you love me, keep my commandments. Not that it justifies us, not that it brings us closer to God, but that it’s an expression of what? Love, that has the goal of glorifying God through what? Our actions, our hands, and our feet. We are called to serve God with a loyal heart and a willing mind, and therefore we must know the 10 Commandments, to bend our thoughts to the 10 Commandments, to the will of God, and our hands and our actions as well.
Now, too many are soft on sin when it’s someone we like is another way of looking at that. You may say, well, I think they really meant well. The other way of looking at that is I like them, and I don’t wanna be too harsh on them, and I’m sure there are plenty of people in Israel that like one another.
I mean, Hosea probably had friends until he started doing his prophesying, and then he lost all his friends. But God must come first. It may become a time where you have to draw a line in the sand.
I’m not saying you always have to do it, right? But again, it begins in the heart. Do you love God more than your spouse, more than your child, more than your neighbor, more than your country? By God’s grace, we don’t have to have that conflict often, that we tend to go down the same path. They’re not running across us, and hey, will you sin? Deuteronomy talks about that, remember there? Chapter 12 or 13, where it says your wife, your family member comes to you, and says, let’s worship other gods.
And you’re supposed to say, no, I love you. Why are you doing this? That shows, that’s where the rubber hits the road, and it’s hard. I know it’s hard.
We’ve all done a little bit of it in our lives, I’m sure. But that’s what it means, the first commandment in a nutshell. You make a concrete, put feet on it.
What will you do when your favorite person in the world, your spouse, your parents, ask you to sin, ask you to ignore God, ask you to walk away? You don’t have to yell at them, and say, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, by God’s grace. He must come first. Paul shows this over and over again, his love for the Christians, and more importantly, his love for God, by admonishing an entire presbytery, known as the Churches of Corinth.
And a whole book about that. And Hosea does the same thing, and the prophets, because they love God’s people, and they love God even more. And secondly, not just obedience of God, that is more precisely would say, the second table of the law, loving your neighbor, taking care of one another, in the household of faith.
Some of these things will come up in Hosea, but what especially comes up, is this second way of serving God. The first table of the law. Worship of him.
And it was already hinted at, when I quoted Mark 4.10, when Jesus said, you shall serve him, and serve him only. Again, in Matthew 4.10, similarly we read, away with you Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only you shall serve. It is obedience there, but specifically Jesus uses a word that highlights religious duty, like a priest, or worship, can be translated at times.
And worship, or service in this sense, is what, about God as the immediate object of your action, your thoughts, or your words. And that deals with the first table of the law. Specifically the first, the second, and third, and even the fourth.
I mean, you’re gonna desecrate the Lord’s day with your foul language, or your actions? Of course not. Obeying God in worship. We usually use the word worship.
Worship is a fine word. I’ll cover this in my other sermon, on the second commandment, where I’ll try to condense an entire semester into one sermon, when I went over what worship is. Worship is specifically honoring God, directly or indirectly.
And directly is clearly using his words, thinking about him, reading his Bible, praying to him, honoring him on the Lord’s day, and assembling of God’s people. Of course, you can assemble with God’s people throughout the week, we have Thanksgiving. Days of Thanksgiving, we talk about.
When it’s God who is the subject, the immediate object, that’s what’s important about that. Because he’s always there, remotely, in the sense of, I’m not thinking about God right now, but if you ask me, yes, I’m doing it for God’s glory. That’s the idea.
To bring to him, whenever we have thoughts about him, to have most honorable thoughts about him, and praise before him, and the like. And we see here, in verse 11, again, because it so clearly highlights it, I will cause all her mirth to cease. It’s gonna stop.
Having all this body fun, apparently, at God’s expense of his honor. Her feast days, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts. The Lord says, that’s not worshiping me.
You are worshiping something else, another God. Mixing up what I have, and thus, tearing down my honor. Whatever you attach to God’s word, when it comes to the first four commandments, you’re taking down and attaching mud to God’s honor.
We read that in Colossians, this morning. Chapter two, where men were teaching the commandments of men. Touch not, taste not, handle not.
If you wanna be really holy, then follow our rules. If you wanna have your position before God, you wanna honor him right, you wanna glorify him, you wanna worship him, another word for honor is worship. Some of the different words used there in the Bible.
Then do it our way, that’s man-made, instead of God-made. To have no other gods before the Lord God Almighty means to serve him alone. Your boss, your spouse, your parents, must take second place whenever there’s a conflict.
And serving him, especially the first table directly in worship, means doing it aright in accordance to his word. In Israel’s case, of course, they serve bales. Bale and bales and plurals, like I mentioned in the last sermon.
The other sins there as well, but mostly emphasizing the false worship. Mixing it with pagan idolatry. Talking about bale, God never used that name formally for himself, although they would use it at times because it also means master.
But almost every case in the Old Testament, it’s a bad usage. It’s another god. And it’s not that especially bad by God’s grace in the American churches, at least not from the polls I’ve seen, although maybe if you ask the right question, you can find it.
They’re not calling God by other names, praise the Lord. They’re not having gross violations and alters of killing animals and whatnot. Although the Roman Catholic Church comes the closest with their view of the mass.
But ignorance, false opinions of God is a violation of the first table. And that should be a serious matter for us and our hearts to be careful what we say and think about God and his word and his truth and with one another. To help our fellow Christians get a better understanding if we have that by God’s grace, to speak to them and they to us.
He must always be first, brothers and sisters, and everyone else must be second when there is a conflict. And even when there’s not a conflict, it’s important to put that first and meditate and pray upon these things. And remember the first commandment.
The first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me, is the greatest commandment of them all because it shows us the greatest reason to live, to serve, to glorify, and to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. May the God of grace and mercy and his Holy Spirit be with each and every one of you that we will continue to walk down this path together. Let us pray.
God above, may your spirit be with us with conviction, with strength, with encouragement, God, for we certainly have fallen short. We have sinned, we have been unduly ignorant when we should have been better instructed, God. We have, in other ways, violated your first commandment.
As most of the expression here is shown, Lord, in the larger catechism, it begins with the heart. Help us, we pray, to purify our hearts by your word, but especially by your grace and your mercy and the promises of the gospel to continue to forgive us of our sins and trespasses. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be with us this week, we pray, day by day, that we would live in the light of loving you, glorifying you, and serving you.
By the blood of Christ, amen.