Now we'll go on with our little heart-to-heart talk
regarding that wonderful heart-to-heart talk
that God and Moses had on the Mount of Sinai.
Oh, that was wonderful!
And when he talked to Moses up there on the Mount,
it was not only just regarding the children of Israel,
but he talked about you and he talked about me,
he talked about something that concerned every person
who was ever born or will ever be born.
For in that great heart-to-heart talk that God and Moses had,
God gave to him the ten rules for successful living.
And do you want to know something?
No man is big enough or smart enough
to violate the unchangeable laws of the eternal God
and get by with it.
I don't care who that man is, I don't care how smart that man is.
I don't care how famous, I don't care what prestige that man may have.
No person is big enough or smart enough
to violate the laws of God and get by with it.
You cannot break God's law without suffering a penalty.
Man only breaks himself when he breaks any one of the laws of God,
and it's just like that.
Now, it's very important to consider the order
in which God stated his laws.
The first four deal with man's relationship with God,
and the last six deal with man's relationship with man.
Do you want to know something?
Before man can live rightfully with each other,
he must first get right with God.
That's right.
You cannot live successfully with your fellow man.
That's what all this trouble is about.
That's the reason we're having such an awful time trying to live with each other.
Man cannot live successfully with his fellow man
unless first of all he has learned how to live successfully with God.
That's why in these ten rules for living,
the first thing that God talks about is man's relationship with himself.
Somebody says, the golden rule is my religion.
Oh, I get so sick and tired of hearing that.
Invariably, when you begin talking to some people about the things of God,
you can even begin talking to them about the Ten Commandments,
and then invariably they hark back to the golden rule,
and they'll say the golden rule is my religion.
I live according to the golden rule, but my friend,
the golden rule is nobody's religion because it is not a religion.
It is merely the expression of religion.
That's what the golden rule is.
You're only kidding yourself.
You're not going to be the loser in the long run when you feel
and honestly, consciously feel that you're all right and very smugly.
You hide behind the golden rule and saying that the golden rule is your religion.
Don't be deceived. Don't deceive yourself.
The golden rule is not a religion. Please hear me.
The golden rule is wonderful, but it is merely the expression of religion.
Until a man has found God, he begins at no beginning.
He works to no end.
You have no beginning, no end. You have no foundation.
You have nothing to work to. There really is no goal.
You have no starting place.
This is one of those heart-to-heart talks.
We're just going to take the whole thing out, lay it on the table,
and be honest with yourself, and for 20 minutes, be honest with God.
If you are a man who has not found God,
if I'm talking to a person who has not found God as a heavenly Father,
you have no personal relationship with God,
no direct relationship with God Almighty.
Then you have no beginning, and you are working to no end.
It's just like that.
Now, the First Commandment is somewhat surprising.
We would think that it would begin with these words,
Thou shalt believe in a God, which of course would be a law against atheism.
There is no such law. God took care of that in our creation.
Every man, every woman is made with the capacity for God.
Every time a newborn baby cries,
every time a precious little bundle of flesh comes into the world,
every time there's a birth,
remember that in that little bundle of flesh, God has so ordained,
God has so created capacity in that little body for Himself.
There is a knowledge of the Great Creator in that brain.
It's just like that.
God has so ordained, He's made provision for it.
God took care of that in our creation.
We do not have to teach a baby to hunger or to thirst.
Nature does that.
We say nature, but after all, who is nature but God?
You never saw a little baby in your life.
It can only be a half hour old,
and yet that baby does not have to be taught to be hungry.
That baby does not have to be taught to thirst.
No.
That baby is born to hunger, to thirst.
God took care of that.
However, we must train our children to satisfy their hungers
and their thirsts with the right things.
Understand?
Every man is made with a capacity for God.
Every man is born knowing there is a Supreme Being.
There's something greater than himself,
something he has to give himself over to.
Something that is bigger than himself.
He's born with that.
Man instinctively believes and worships.
Sure, all you have to do is to go over to India.
You'll realize that.
Those poor ignorant people, tens of thousands of thousands of them,
I watched them.
I watched them as they have worshiped the sun.
They worship the idols.
They have given their bodies over to be burned.
Worship?
Oh, beloved, if only Christians could worship
with such sacrificial worship and with such intensity
as they worship their false gods.
Christianity would shake the world for God.
Man instinctively, I don't care whether it's in darkest Africa,
I don't care in the very darkest of hedonism.
Man instinctively believes and worships.
Nowhere does the Bible attempt to prove the existence of God.
Man is created incomplete.
He cannot be at rest until there is a satisfaction of his deepest hunger,
the yearning of his deepest soul.
But the danger lies in that fact that man can promote his worship instinct
and make for himself a false god.
That's why God had to take Moses aside in that heart-to-heart talk
and say, Moses, now look here, I've got to talk to you about your people down there.
They have been led out of Egyptian bondage.
I am leading them now into a land that literally flows with milk and honey.
There'll be temptations beyond your middle conception,
as we're talking together now.
They will be blessed with a prosperity that they never dreamed possible.
The first law that I give to you, the first rule for living is just this,
thou shalt have none other gods before me.
That's the first rule for living.
Of the ten words of Sinai, the first four, remember, deal with man's relation to God.
And of these, the first brings us face to face with the object of worship.
Thou shalt have none other gods before me.
I am the only one to be worshiped.
I am the mighty god of this universe.
I am the great creator.
I am God Almighty, Jehovah God.
Now, the second reveals the true mode of worship.
Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image,
nor the likeness of any form that is in heaven above.
The order of worship is to be spiritual, not material.
We're not to make an image of God.
We're to not make an image of anything that is like unto God.
We're not to worship an image.
We're not to bow down to any image.
There it is.
Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image,
nor the likeness of any form that is in heaven above.
Again, I repeat, the order of worship is to be spiritual, not material.
Now, the third states that this relationship of man to God,
that of worship, is to be a perpetual one, governing all of his life.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,
for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
The fourth provides a very definite statement.
One seventh of man's time is to be set apart
for the express and sole purpose of worshiping God.
One seventh of your time, one seventh of your week,
shall be set apart for one purpose and one purpose only,
for the express purpose of worshiping God.
Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
After he has laid these laws down regarding man's relationship to God,
it's then he deals with the relations of man to his fellow man.
First comes a family relation.
Honor thy father and thy mother.
Second, thou shalt not kill.
Third, thou shalt not commit adultery.
Fourth, thou shalt not steal.
Fifth, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
And the remaining one is also of a moral nature.
But it shows that the heart of man is to be
jealously guarded against wrong desire.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house and so forth.
Now go on with this.
Here we come to that first commandment.
Let's deal with that first commandment.
We'll see the meaning of that first commandment.
If God is what he claims to be,
he will be, he that is, he that was,
then he must be the supreme object of our worship.
He's got to be.
If it is true that he is Jehovah, man's God,
then the commandment is a reasonable one.
It must be a very unreasonable thing to have any other God beside him.
If God is all that he claims to be,
past, present, future,
if he is the mighty God of this universe,
the glorious creator of all that exists,
and if in the future he is to be God Almighty forever and ever, eternal,
then it would be the most unreasonable thing in the world
to worship anything else but God Almighty.
In the very necessity of the case,
if the words spoken by God be true, then God is sufficient,
and God is God.
Therefore, there cannot be two who fulfill that description of limitless life,
point to another God, and he must be limited.
There can only be one God who is eternal.
If anyone should claim that position, that one is false.
Therefore, it is based upon the necessity of the case,
upon the most absolute reasonableness,
that God first declares himself and his glory,
and then utters the first great word,
thou shalt have none other gods before me.
Let's consider something for just a few minutes.
Every man needs a God.
There's no man who has not somewhere in his heart, in his life,
in the essential of his being, a shrine in which there is a deity whom he worships.
It is impossible for a man to live without having an object of worship
as it is for a bird to fly if it is taken out of the air.
The very composition of human life, the mystery of man's being,
demands a center of worship as necessary as man's existence.
Believe me, that's true.
All life is worship.
There may be a false God at the center of life,
but every activity of being, all the energy of life,
the devotion of powers, these things are all worship.
Now, the question is whether the life and the powers of man
are devoted to the worship of the true God or that of a false one.
There's a center, a motive, a reason, a shrine, a deity somewhere,
something which man worships.
It has been said that when man dethrones God,
he deifies and he worships himself.
There are men today of whom it may be said that they worship themselves
with all their heart and with all their strength and with all their mind,
and themselves only do they serve.
The world today, this 12th century, is filled with men and women
who literally worship themselves.
They have deified themselves.
In every case, man demands a God, a king, a lawgiver,
one who arranges the program, who orders the commandments,
and demands obedience.
The moment a man gets out of touch with God
and loses the vision of God Almighty,
the one who says, I am Jehovah, the Lord thy God,
the minute a man gets away from him,
he puts something else in the place of God,
and the minute he puts something else in the place of God, believe me,
I tell you the truth, he gets into trouble.
Know that, for again I repeat,
no man is big enough or smart enough to violate
any one of the laws of the eternal God and get by with it.
No man can break God's law, he only breaks himself.
Go if you please now to the New Testament,
and this is exactly the meaning of the sixth chapter of Matthew.
Seek ye first God, God first,
and all these things shall be added unto thee.
The reason the world situation is going from bad to worse
is that we are centrally and fundamentally wrong.
We are worshipping the wrong thing.
If we as a nation, if we as individuals
put something else in the place of God,
if we worship something else instead of God Almighty,
then all these things shall be subtracted from us.
Get the central spiritual facts straight, says the word of God,
and your material facts will be straight too.
You cannot go wrong in one without going wrong in the other.
I read it once more and here it is,
thou shalt have none other gods before me.
If you are worshipping the wrong God, then my friend,
you will pay for it.
No man can break this law of God.
Man only breaks himself.
Amen.