This is Sanctity of Life Sunday, the Sunday when the church in America remembers the Supreme Court’s decision in 1973 that legalized abortions in every state. In June of 2022, the Supreme Court reversed the original ruling and returned the decision-making authority to individual states. Many pro-life people began remembering the original Court’s ruling in the eighties by participating in rallies, marches, protests, etc. Today we will consider how we, as believers, can exercise the most effective action to support life, not just of the unborn, but of the life and dignity of every person. The sanctity of life encompasses every aspect concerning the flourishing of life including abortion, murder, suicide, etc. 

We have been studying Romans, Chapter 11 where we considered the kindness and severity of God. These two attributes of God are two sides of the same coin: God’s holiness. He showed kindness to Gentiles because of their faith while severity to Israel because of their unbelief and lawlessness. Lawlessness is an offense against God’s holiness. Israel had worshipped and loved God and His Law, but they began to adopt idol worship as well, and this is the reason why God turned to the Gentiles. Lawlessness was seen in Israel’s turning away from God’s Law, specifically the Ten Commandments given in Exodus 20 and also in Deuteronomy 5. Each of the Ten Commandments teaches various principles of one specific subject: love. Commandments one through four deal with loving God and Commandments six through ten deal with loving other people. Today, we will examine the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before Me.”

The Law of God is designed to expose the soul of man and what we love. John Calvin said that the Law of God is a mirror that allows us to see deep inside our soul, what we truly worship, honor, and love. The Law is our tutor (Galatians 3:24), showing us where we lack love for God or for other people. The Law is good in that it allows us to come face-to-face with our sin. According to Scripture, love is a fire that burns deep within the soul of man. And Hebrews 12:29 describes God as an all-consuming fire, a fire that represents His passion, His zeal, and His affections.

God’s passions should motivate us to respond in the way described in Hebrews 13:1-5, “Let brotherly love continue. 2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. 3 Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. 4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. 5 Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’" If we love God, we will do these things.

Jesus warns in Matthew 24:12 that love will grow cold because of lawlessness. A time will come when there will be no desire to please God. A. W. Pink says, “Surely no anointed eye can fail to see that this prediction is now being fulfilled. Lawlessness abounds on every side, men are bent on pleasing themselves, authority is openly flouted, discipline is becoming a thing of the past, parental control is rarely exercised, marriage for the most part has degenerated into a thing of convenience, nations regard their solemn treaties as scraps of paper. And God’s own people have not escaped the chilling effects of this. The love of many of them has waxed cold.”

When we consider the sanctity of life and how we should interact with society, we need to realize that we don’t have a good understanding of God’s holiness. We don’t uphold His holiness and are sometimes guilty of lawlessness ourselves. We can’t do anything to help society if we are practicing lawlessness. The church today is rapidly growing cold; we have forgotten the love that God has for us and subsequently we have forgotten our role in the community. When Israel was in exile in Babylon, God wanted His people to colonize within the community. Jeremiah 29:6-7 describes specifically what God wanted them to do: “Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

Romans 1:18-32 describes the rampant ungodliness that existed in the ancient world, yet God didn’t tell the Israelites to isolate, or remove themselves, or exist in Christian sub-cultures. God wanted them to intercede for the Babylonians, to share the gospel with them, all the while standing firm in their faith. God wanted the Israelites to live in the community and be holy because He is holy. There is no better way to seek the welfare of the ungodly than for us to seek God’s righteous will. God’s righteous will is expressed in the Ten Commandments.

We are tempted to think of the Ten Commandments as a narrow set of rules that we mostly obey; however, they are “exceedingly broad” (Psalm 119:96). They are all encompassing as Jesus demonstrated when He equated lust with adultery and anger with murder. Because of our insufficient, brief reading of the Commandment, we may think we love God and are obeying His commands, but in our ignorance, we are really in violation of them. When we see the Commandments as God intends for us to see them, we will see the Law in the right light. Then we will see God’s holiness in the right light and ourselves in the right light and we can seek the welfare of the city. Calvin said, “The moral law shows God’s righteousness, which is the righteousness alone that is acceptable to God. It warns, informs, convicts, and condemns every man of his own unrighteousness. Man blinded and drunk with self-love must first be compelled to know and confess his own feebleness and impurity.” Our depravity prevents us from seeing the significance of the impact of moral law on our life. 

As we consider the First Commandment and its broadness, we see that it is a total approach to life. Every application from this text serves as one primary purpose in our life: to uphold God’s holiness by our exclusive love for Him. There is much confusion in the church as to how we should approach the pro-life movement. The key to discerning the proper approach is found in this First Commandment. Support for the pro-life movement is often seen in demonstrations, picketing, publications, social media posts, podcasts, etc. In concert with these there is a constant violation of the law that they are supposedly upholding, an upholding of a political righteousness over an upholding of godly righteousness. 

We need clarity and this must come first from applying the First Commandment to our lives, then observing the social implications that flow from this Commandment. We need to see how life is sanctified by a sanctified love of God.

God’s method of giving the Ten Commandments was not like anything else in Scripture. God’s Holy Spirit inspired men to write Scripture, but in the case of the giving of the Ten Commandments, God, in His shekinah glory, came down to Mt. Sinai and wrote them on tablets of stone with His finger. The uniqueness of this points to a priority; all other commandments from God frow from these Ten. God says that we are to obey His will perfectly, meaning that we are to have no other gods before Him. This a personal command, for it begins with “You.” We like to speak in generic terms because it softens the impact, but the Hebrew is very specific – “You shall have no other gods before Me.” When we realize that this Command is to us specifically, we have no excuse for disobeying; we are held accountable for it for the rest of our life. We have no excuse for having other gods in our life; there is no wiggle room!

The Commands begins with “You shall” and continues with “have no”. This is an absolute prohibition. This “no” is as permanent as it is emphatic. God is saying you shall never have other gods, you shall never want to have other gods, you shall not even think about having other gods. It is hard for us to grasp this prohibition because we are not used to being told no. When we think about God’s instructions regarding the organization of the church or the family, we recoil at the idea of anyone telling us that we shouldn’t do this or that. We tell them that that is their truth, we have our own truth. We have bought into the idea that there is no absolute truth. We may say that there is absolute truth but live in such a way that contradicts our words. The First Commandment and all others fly in the face of modernity.

Other gods included idea that we conjure up in our mind that captivates our attention, our time, or our affection. This is a broad list. Moses lists the Ten Commandments again in Deuteronomy Chapter Five. He repeats the First Commandment in verse seven then, starting in verse eight, explains some ramifications of this Commandment. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 9 You shall not bow down to them or serve them.” Israel would understand that serving other gods included giving them their affection, or energy, or resources. God says that if we obey Him, He will show steadfast love to thousands of those who love Him and keep His commandments.

In Deuteronomy 6, Moses further warned the Israelites, “then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 13 It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. 14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you.” (vv. 12-14) God reminds the people what He did for them, then tells them to serve Him alone, even when they are in the midst of a people who worship and serve many gods. God wanted His people to remain sanctified to Him and to show the pagans what it looks like to serve Yahweh alone. This would expose the foolishness of worshipping all the gods they serve.

By reminding the Jews that He brought them out of Egypt, He is making them remember how foolish He made the Egyptian gods appear by defeating each of them through the various plagues. God is telling the Israelites that He wants them to love Him above everything else. He declares to them, I AM YAHWEH. He is reminding the Israelites that He is unique in His essence, His righteousness, His power, His nature, etc. He warns them that they must guard their hearts because they will be tempted to worship the gods of the pagans they would encounter. God’s people were to uphold His uniqueness, His righteousness, His holiness, and to worship Him alone.

When God said, “You must have no other gods before me” in Exodus 20:3, He is not talking about an order of priority. It is not love Me more than you love other things; we are to love and worship Him exclusively. Phil Johnson said, “This is not a general instruction to the nation to keep every idol but God out of their national pantheon. It was a command to individuals forbidding them to ever, in any circumstance, to set anything or anyone above God or even along side of God in order of priority.” This is what God is calling us to do in the First Commandment.

God knows everything about us; He knows what we worship, He knows our will and the intentions of our heart. The First Commandment tells us that God is to have the exclusive priority of our love and we are to live out that love practically. Our desire should be to know that God sees us as His child, one who loves Him more than anything else in the world. We should give God all our affections, our supreme love, and priority in our life. God is a jealous God (Ex. Deuteronomy 6:15). When Jesus was asked by the Pharisees which is the great commandment in the Law (Matthew 22:36), Jesus answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." Whether we eat or drink, everything we do in life should be for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:21). This is one implication of the First Commandment. Loving God with all our heart and all our soul encompasses every aspect of life.

Some applications of loving God with all our heart and all our soul are:

A. Personal

1. We are to love God righteously, solely, particularly, exclusively, and exhaustively. From this perspective, it puts God’s will foremost in our life. We are to put off willful ignorance, for God has told us that other things would compete for our affection.

2. We are to know God. We cannot love Someone we don’t know. The way we get to know God is through study and meditation on Scripture and interaction with other believers.

3. We are to hold up our life to the First Commandment, to allow it to wash over us and expose what we love as well as any superficial love we have for God. What are our affections, where do we spend our time and energy? We constantly tell ourselves lies. We tell ourselves that we love God with our whole heart and soul because we go to church, we read our Bible, and we talk with other believers. If the comprehensive nature of the way we live violates this Commandment, everything we do is in vain. God demands that we give Him exclusive priority in every area of our life.

Among the things that Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6, He said you cannot serve two masters. The point of the Sermon on the Mount is to tell us and show us what a dedicated love of God looks like. This sermon is an exposition of the First Commandment. When He said in Matthew 6:24, “You cannot serve God and money”, He was essentially saying you cannot serve God and comfort. When we awaken each morning and think about the resources we possess, the things we must do this day, the responsibilities we have for our family, the people we will interact with, our desire should be for God to accomplish His will in all of these areas. Usually, this requires a sacrifice of personal comfort for we are not to allow anything to interfere with our love for God.

If we don’t obey the First Commandment, our prayers are falling on deaf ears. God will not listen to us if we are not loving Him above everything else. You may accomplish great things in life and get to heaven only to discover that all your works were burned up because God views them as wood, hay, and stubble. If we are not loving God above everything else, we might be struggling with knowing God’s will for our live. Romans 12:1-2 is clear: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Maybe our marriage is struggling because husbands are not loving God foremost. 1 Peter 3:7 says, “…husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.” If you want reconciliation and unity in your marriage, live in this way, otherwise God will not hear your prayers. If we ignore the First Commandment, we are really trying to live out our will, hoping that God will affirm us. As we live life, we must admit that we think about many other things before we think about God. The thing we need to do is get on our knees and confess that we have not loved God above everything else.

We must look at our lives objectively by putting every aspect on a scale and comparing it with our love for God, our finances, our marriage, our job, etc. We must be able to say to God, I love You more than any of these. We need to ask ourself, what satisfies me most? If it is not God, it is your idol. If there is any one thing in your life that you think you can’t live without, that is your idol. That is the thing you love more than God, the thing you must put on the altar before Him. In our culture, the thing we most struggle with is the idol of comfort. We will do whatever it takes to avoid discomfort. Standing against the norms of society will bring discomfort, but seeking God’s will is what He demands of us.

When we identify idols, we should fear God and His judgment; we need to recognize that we deserve judgment because He alone is worthy of our worship. He is worthy of everything. What has He held back from us so that we might be saved? What blessing has He withheld? He has made us join heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17). God didn’t just save us; He gave us great blessings. Jesus left heaven and subjected Himself to the most heinous torture, so why would we not worship Him above everything else? Considering what God has done for us, His kindness for us while being severe with Israel, why would there be any competition for our love? If you are a believer, you shall have no other gods before Him. If you are not a believer, you need to bend your will to His; He deserves your worship because He is the One who made you. He is Savior by common grace, whether you recognize this or not. You, also, shall have no other gods before Him.

Jesus, speaking to His disciples said, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:24-25) Then Jesus said in verses 26-27, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life?” If you refuse to bend your will to God’s, your soul is the thing you are giving up in exchange for your idols. 

B. Worship

Jesus said that when we come to worship and are planning to give a gift at the altar but remember that we have a conflict with another Christian, we are commanded to be reconciled with that person before giving the gift (Matthew 5:23). The principle behind this is that God does not accept vain, empty worship. We think that we have done something good for God by coming to worship, but He says, I don’t know you. Isaiah 29:13 says that Israel honors God “with their lips, while their hearts are far from me.” This is vain worship! God does not accept outward acts of worship if there is a battle for what we love in our heart. When we come to the Lord’s Supper and hold any sin in our heart, especially that of having other gods, we eat and drink judgment on ourselves (1 Corinthians 11:29). This is the reason we pray and meditate, asking God to reveal our sin to us, so that we confess these sins prior to taking the elements.

C. Social Relationships

An implication affecting our social relationships is sitting at the Lord’s table with sin in our hearts; it impacts the whole community. Another implication is found in Matthew 5:43, where Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'”  The Pharisee taught that it was acceptable to hate our enemies, but Jesus said otherwise. In verse 44 He said, “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” In our political culture, it is so easy to allow anger to stir up in our heart and hate those who oppose us, viewing them as our enemies. We may see sin in their life; they may be abusers, or addicts, or be struggling with the sin of sexual identity, or they may be in a homosexual relationship, or they may work in an abortion clinic. We recognize that they are enemies of God; therefore, we see them as our enemies also. But God tells us to love them and pray for them, pray for their conversion. Romans 5:8 reminds us that while we were yet sinners, enemies of God, Christ died for us. God set the example by loving us when we were His enemies. Sometimes we even find enemies within our own households.

Scripture tells us to be about the flourishing of life. Looking at Psalm 19 we see joy in heaven as the creation is acting in the way God designed it; here we see life flourishing. Verse nineteen says, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight.” This is the First Commandment lived out. When Jesus was tempted in the desert, He did not vent hatred against Satan, rather He quoted Scripture. Though Jesus knew that Judas would betray Him, He washed his feet. If we love God more than anything else, He will prepare a table where we will sit with our enemies in fellowship. Loving our enemies is one way in which we promote the flourishing of life. 

This has implications in our community, and the first is that the sanctity of human life begins with a personal sanctifying love for God. We are to love people from the womb to the tomb – period. We are to uphold the dignity of humanity, even in the midst of their foolishness. We are to share with them the truth of Scripture, call them to repentance, do good to them, and love them. We are to be light to them and be about protecting and promoting the flourishing of life. Life is a gift from God; everything belongs to the Lord (Psalm 24:1), and life is His to give and to take (1 Samuel 2:6). If a culture rejects the God who created life and rejects the law that protects life, we should expect to see a culture of death. This is what we see today. All that we see is a symptom of a deeper issue, a worship issue seen in people who don’t love God with their whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. Believers who know the Law are to go into the community and seek its welfare. 

Hearing a pro-life sermon once a year, where abortion or assisted suicide or capital punishment is discussed, is meaningless if we don’t uphold the First Commandment. If we are upholding the First Commandment, all the other things will flow out. It begins with a personal, exclusive love for God that then flows into our church, our community, and the world. We need to reach the world with the gospel, taking them the Law of God, exposing the idols of their heart, and showing that we love God above everything else. If you are not living out the First Commandment, your hypocrisy will not be a platform for the gospel; it will be a hinderance to the message and be confusing to the world.

The sanctity of life begins in our heart by having a supreme love and affection for God alone. Without this, everything else is meaningless; your political position, your righteous acts, everything you stand for, all your volunteer hours, and all your community service are absolutely in vain if you don’t love God above everything else.

Selah:

1. What in this sermon impacted your feeling toward those who have had an abortion?

2. What are your feelings toward those you view as great sinners?

3. Where do you expend most of your time and energy? Is this an idol?

4. How well do you think you are obeying the First Commandment?