How to Worship the Lord Only: The First Commandment
Type of Event: Worship Service: Sermon only
Date Recorded: 17 Sep, 2006
Location: Pittsburgh, PA 
Topics: Regeneration / Spiritual Growth
Description: Rise Above It: The First Commandment
"'You shall have no other gods before Me.'" (Exodus 20:3)
In our basically monotheistic culture, we often dismiss commandment number one as finished. We never go to satanic rituals, we never bow down to a golden statue, and we don't burn incense to icons in our homes. Congratulations! This is a success not to be disregarded, but it is obeying the first commandment in only its most natural and external form. This may have been enough for the Children of Israel, but the Lord wants us to be more spiritual. Through the New Testament and the Writings for the New Church, the Lord teaches us about internal and spiritual ways of understanding and obeying His law.
In its spiritual meaning, the Lord is teaching us to worship Him in His Divine Human only, the Lord Jesus Christ. Further, we learn that true worship does not consist solely in standing and kneeling, saying prayers and singing songs. True worship of the Lord is living according to the true ideas that you have learned from the Lord's Word. It is in life that genuine worship exists. Anything that prevents you from living what you know to be true is also an idol. Evil spirits are skilled at distracting us away from thinking about the place of the Lord in our lives. They want us to pay attention to, and live our lives in dedication to, anything other than the Lord. Drugs, money, and sex are the easy ones to see, partly because they can be so spectacularly destructive. More difficult to identify in our own lives are the subtly destructive things like anger, pride, revenge, control, reputation, and cynicism. These can be idols that we do not wish to abandon as we learn to worship the Lord Jesus Christ with all our hearts, minds, and strength.
This is the first commandment and it is the center of all religion. The acknowledgement of the Lord Jesus Christ as the one God of heaven and earth, Creator and Redeemer, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the essential feature of the life of religion. It is because of this acknowledgement, and only because of this, that the rest of religion contains anything of genuine life.
"Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." (Revelation 19:10)
To see that this is true, read Exodus 20:1-6, Revelation 19:6-10, and True Christian Religion 294, 295, 296:1.
Full text available at http://www.PittsburghNewChurch.org/
References: Exo. 20:1-6; Rev. 19:6-10; TCR294, 295, 296:1.
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1How to Worship the Lord Only (Amos Glenn) - Exodus 20:3 (Sep 17, 2006)14m 10s
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