We now turn back to the Word of God before I preach to you. Acts chapter 17, verse 16. Something that happened in the days of the New Testament this time. While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply troubled by all the idols he saw everywhere throughout the city. And he went to the synagogue for discussions with the Jews and the devout Gentiles and spoke daily in the public square to all who happened to be there. He also had an encounter with some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. Their reaction when he told them about Jesus and his resurrection was, "He's a dreamer or he's pushing some foreign religion." But they invited him to the forum at Mars Hill. Come and tell us more about this new religion, they said, for you are saying some rather startling things, and we want to hear more.

I should explain that all the Athenians, as well as the foreigners in Athens, seemed to spend all their time discussing their latest new ideas. So Paul, standing before them at the Mars Hill Forum, addressed them as follows:

Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious. For as I was out walking, I saw your many altars, and one of them had this inscription on it: "To the unknown God." You have been worshipping him without knowing who he is, and now I wish to tell you about him. He made the world and everything in it, and since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn't live in man-made temples, and human hands can't minister to his needs, for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything and satisfies every need there is. He created all the people of the world from one man, Adam, and scattered the nations across the face of the earth. He decided beforehand which should rise and fall, and when, he determined their boundaries. His purpose in all this is that they should seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.

As one of your own poets says it, we are the sons of God. If this is true, we shouldn't think of God as an idol made by men from gold or silver or chipped from stone. God tolerated man's past ignorance about these things, but now he commands everyone to put away idols and worship only him. For he has set a day for justly judging the world by the man whom he has appointed, and has pointed him out by bringing him back to life again.

When they heard Paul speak of the resurrection of a person who had been dead, some laughed. But others said, "We want to hear more about this later." That ended Paul's discussion with them, but a few joined him and became believers. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the city council, and a woman named Damaris, and others.

We're studying the Ten Commandments on these Sunday evenings, and tonight we start with the first after an introduction last Sunday. And the first commandment is this: "I am Jehovah, your God. Who liberated you from your slavery in Egypt, you may worship no other god than me." Not quite the form that you may know it well, but that's the translation I've got here.

Everybody's got to have a god. Everybody. That's the way we're made. Somebody has said if there weren't a god, we'd have to invent one. And it was Huxley who said that every man and woman has a God-shaped blank in their soul. And that feels empty and hollow and human nature, like nature, abhors a vacuum and wants to fill it with something or someone. Someone has got to be the center of your life. Someone or something has got to draw your affection and your devotion.

You need to put your trust in someone or something to give your life meaning and value and purpose and to see you through. Everybody's got to have a God, and everybody does have a God. And that's what makes the first commandment so necessary. This makes human beings unique among all the creatures of the earth.

No animal has ever revealed a God-shaped blank in their soul. No animal has ever been seen praying or doing anything that could be interpreted as praying. No animals have ever got together and tried to start a religion of any kind. Animals show no awareness whatever of the need to relate their lives to some center of love and worship.

But every human being has revealed that, everyone that's ever lived. It is one of the things that marks us off from the animals. We are not naked apes. We are something very much more.

And it is this need of every human being for a God that makes it terribly important to find the right one. But surely somebody would say to me, "A lot of people today are getting on very well without any God." There is less religion around. Fewer people go to church. Fewer people talk about God. Most of my neighbors seem to get on fine without a God.

Don't you make any mistake about this. They are not getting on without a God. They may not come to church. They may not read their Bible. They may never mention the word God. But every one of them is desperately trying to fill the God-shaped blank in their soul. They've got a God all right.

And the important question to ask people is this: what is the name of your God? If you're having problems talking to an atheist or someone else, get them to write down the name of their God. And if they have difficulty thinking of the name, say, what is the last thing that you would like to lose or the last person?

What is your most precious affection? Write that down and you've got the name of your God.

What is the name of your God as you listen to me tonight? It's not whether you believe in a God that matters. It's the name of the God you believe in that is all important.

There is then this double relationship with you and your God, whatever that God is. On the one hand, you look to your God to receive help. Guidance, protection, meaning, fulfillment, satisfaction. On the other hand, you look to your God that you may give homage, that you may have a focal point for your ambitions, for your affections, for your aspirations.

All these need some kind of target. And we are now going to spend the rest of this evening looking at the kind of gods that people do have.

You can divide them all into just two groups: the supernatural gods and the natural gods. First of all, I'm going to look at supernatural gods.

It's very difficult for us today to imagine a world in which there are more than one God. For centuries now, the British people have been taught from childhood that there is only one God. And you've imbibed this with your mother's milk. You've accepted this as part of your society. You've assumed there is only one God.

And therefore, when you talk to people about God, you assume that they're talking about the same person you're referring to. This is part of our English heritage. We are brought up in a country where monotheism... is the normal attitude. That's a big word meaning simply one God. Atheism means no God. Monotheism means one God.

We have not lived in a country where polytheism is the rule. And polytheism means many gods fancy going down the high street and meeting Mrs. Brown from next door and saying, "How's your God today?" Or even who's your God today?

Can you imagine having one God that looked after Sundays and another God that looked after Mondays and another Tuesday? One God who looked after your kitchen and things that happened there, another God that looked after your children and what happened there, another God that looks after your garden and the plants in it, another God who looks after your business.

This is not an unusual situation in our world. Many primitive cultures have so many gods you're just in utter confusion.

We are beginning again to realize what polytheism is like for a number of reasons. Number one, immigration. There are people living in your street who don't believe in your God. They believe in another. You get on a bus and the Pakistani bus conductor believes in God, but not your God. He believes in a God called Allah.

And that's a name you've never used in this church and never will. It's a name of another God.

You go to hospital and an Indian doctor comes and examines you, and that Indian is a Hindu. And if you ask him for the name of his God, he will give you a list of names, for he believes in many.

And these people are now living with us in our society, part of our community. It's raising the whole question of religious knowledge in schools. What, God, are you going to teach the children when you've got children in the same class whose parents believe in Allah and Jehovah and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus and a host of others all in the same classroom?

We are returning to a polytheistic society in this country. Immigration is not the only thing that's doing this.

The Beatles helped. As soon as they went off to the east and visited the Maharishi and came back with wonderful tales of meditation, which died out pretty quickly, they started a craze which did not die out quickly.

And the Western world is becoming increasingly interested in Eastern culture, philosophy, and art. And so we're wearing caftans, and I don't know what else, and we're bringing in more gods into this country.

We're going to practice Zen Buddhism. We're going to learn yoga. We're going to do all these things. And we're going to go back to a polytheistic society in which people say, "My god is this, your god is that," and use different names for God.

This was the situation that the Jews lived in. They were slaves in Egypt and the Egyptians had many gods. If you've been to the Tutankhamen exhibition in the British Museum, you know a little about this. They had many different gods. They had a god of the Nile looking after the river that gave them life. They had a god of the sun, that hot sun that blazed down in Egypt.

They had many gods and many names for those gods. And so the Jews were brought up in a world in which everybody had their own God. Each nation had at least one God of their own, and most nations had many. And everywhere you went, people were worshiping God by different names. They didn't talk about God. They talked about the name, and they always named their God.

And if you had asked anybody in those days, "Do you believe in God?" they would have said, "Which one?" Which one? Well, yes, I believe in this one, but not that one.

And it is in that background which we're beginning again to see and to understand in this country. It's against that background when you had a wide choice that God said, nobody else but me. No other gods besides me. It's got to be me alone.

And we shall need to say this increasingly in our world, a world that's shrinking, a world in which people are becoming interested in many religions, a world in which interest in the occult is increasing, a world in which many religions are having an impact, a world that's got tired of scientific materialism and is returning again to the supernatural and to all the gods of the supernatural world.

Now can you see that this commandment is a blessing in disguise? It simplifies life. It gives you one object of worship instead of many. I was once given a leaflet in Southern Ireland which told me which saint to pray to for any particular problem. There were 159 names listed. Everything from toothaches through appendicitis to a broken marriage.

And there was the list of saints. And what a complicated business it would be to have to look up, what name do I use this morning for this problem? The sheer complication of praying to many people.

This command is a great simplification of life. It says, you've only got to deal with one. Your life can be utterly simplified and you can deal with only one God. Isn't that a wonderful step forward?

It's a liberating commandment. It's an offer of a simple life. It's God saying, "I'll cover every need. I'll provide everything you need by way of protection, guidance, fulfillment, satisfaction."

There's only one God you need. You don't need any others. I undertake to do everything for you that you need.

It's an offer. It's saying you don't need to worry about all the different gods. Just think about me.

Now, I read that lesson from Acts 17 for this reason. When Paul visited Athens, he said, "I saw that you were religious. Everywhere he went, down the main street, temples, altars, places of worship, names of gods on every altar, all the Greek gods laid out in a row, and at the end was an altar inscribed to the unknown God."

And do you know why they put that up? Just to make sure that they hadn't left anybody out.

One day, an earthquake hit Athens. Disaster came, and the population said, "One of the gods must be angry." But how do we find out which one?

And the priest said, "Release a flock of sheep down the main street. And the altar they all lie down by is the god who is offended, and you must then sacrifice the sheep on that altar."

So down the road went the sheep. And you know, they didn't lie down at any altar.

Quite wisely, they went right past the lot of them and settled down in a field at the far end.

And so the priests all got together and they said, "What shall we do?"

And then a priest said, "I think there must be another God who lives in that field and we don't know his name."

And so they put an altar up and I'm telling you the sober truth, that's how that altar got there.

They put it up in the field at the end of Athens to an unknown God. We thought we'd got all of them happy and there must be someone else.

And Paul came into that town and he said, "I've come to tell you about one God. The only one you don't know. The one whose name you don't know. That one at the end."

And I'm going to talk about him. He's the only one there is. He made everything. He's not just living in one field. He made all that is.

You live and move and have your being in him.

I've come to tell you about the one God. Do you know that's a liberating message? No other gods spells freedom.

You can now get away from all the insecurity and fears of how many gods there are looking down on us, how many people we've got to keep happy, how many beings there are up in heaven.

We can look up and say, "The Lord our God is one." And that spells security.

It did for the Jews, and it does for the Christians who believe in the Jewish God. Our God is one.

It's an offer of one God to look after everything. It's a demand for an exclusive relationship. It's saying, "I will not be part of your life unless I'm the only God in your life."

I will not have any rivals in your heart. I will not have you trotting down the road to another temple to make sure.

I will have your exclusive loyalty.

That was the first commandment in a polytheistic situation.

Did the Jews keep that commandment? The sad story, if you read the Old Testament, is no. No. Soon as they mixed with people who believed in other gods, something happened.

They fell in love with those people. The young men of Israel fell in love with young girls who believed in another god.

It's been one of the most serious problems to the people of God all down the ages.

What happens when you fall in love with someone who doesn't believe in your God?

And it was that more than anything else in the history of Israel that led them to bring in other names into their religion.

And if you read the story of Elijah, you'll read how he fought single-handed to stop them worshipping a god called Baal.

And how other prophets fought single-handed to stop them worshipping Ashtoreth and many another god from those nations around them.

Now so far I feel I'm talking about things that don't really affect your life very directly.

I feel I'm talking about things that happen in history, and I don't guess that you're going to rush off down to the temple of Baal as soon as you finish this service.

And you've been brought up in a country where even though there were different denominations, they all spoke of the same person, even though there was some variation of ideas about this person, the different denominations in this country, if you went from church to church, were all claiming to speak of the same God, and they used the same name for that God.

And you don't have much choice to go and worship another god in Guildford.

There is now a Buddhist temple in Surrey. There is a Muslim mosque in Woking.

And there are other places that are going to be built, you'll see, around here, and you'll get an increasing choice.

But at the moment, it's a bit of an academic issue. You're not likely to run after other gods.

You've inherited the English tradition of one God, and you find it very difficult to think of more than one.

Does that mean the commandment has nothing to say to you? I wish it didn't, but I'm afraid it does.

Let's look at what people today use to fill this blank, this God-shaped hole in their self.

We devote ourselves to natural gods that you can see and touch, handle, hear. We devote ourselves to things that God has made.

I'm going to tell you about some of them.

Come with me and visit a young man called Ken.

Ken came to see me a few years ago, and do you know what he said to me?

He said, "Football is my God." Football is my God.

And his God was about 10 inches in diameter, round and made of leather. And it was his God.

He admitted it quite freely. It was this little lump of leather that was the center of his affection and attention and ambition.

Every spare minute he could get, he was worshipping this lump of leather.

And he paid homage to it. He gave priority to it. It took priority over his relationships, over his work, over everything it could.

It was his God.

And he came and told me so.

And God had to separate Ken from his football just to get him free.

Come with me and talk to a dear older lady called Miss

Here is the cleaned-up sermon transcription:

Clark. And Miss Clark got up in a church in Buckinghamshire one night to give her testimony, and she said to the congregation, "Babies were my God." An extraordinary statement. Babies were my God. She said, "I was a nanny." And she said, "I worshiped little babies." They were my life. And she said, "I couldn't bear to be separated from them. I couldn't contemplate existence without babies." And babies became her God. And they were separating her from God. And God had to separate Miss Clark altogether from babies to set her free from that God. Am I being practical enough for you? Both these two people were filling the God-shaped blank in the soul with something else that became their God. And you can fill that blank or try to, somehow it never fits. Whatever you put in there other than God doesn't fit, but we try desperately hard.

You can put your sport in there. You can put your garden in there. You can put a motorbike in there and bow down before it and give all your worship to it and talk about it and live for it and polish it and take it to bits and put it together again. It can become your God. So can your car when you get a bit too old for motorbikes. Your house can be your God until it's just a little ideal home, a palace, but you'll still not be satisfied. You'll still go on papering and decorating.

You can make your business, your job, and I know men in Guildford who've so worshipped the God of business that they couldn't live without it, and what they'll do when they retire, I just don't know. They've sacrificed everything on the altar of their business, including their families in some cases. It's very easy to fill this God-shaped blank. You can even fill it with a church, and you can so live for the church that somehow God doesn't get a look in.

Now, these are modern gods. We're looking at something very near home. If it's not a thing, then you can put a person there. And the worship of the personality cult is one of the phenomena of our day of television. There are youngsters who will talk and think and behave like Donnie or Jimmy Osment more than Jehovah. Why is it that pop stars can get more worship, more emotional response? People get up and sit for hours waiting for one of them to appear at an airport who wouldn't walk down the road and wait 10 minutes for a service to begin for worshiping God. Why? And so we worship pop stars and disc jockeys and politicians, anybody we can put on a pedestal and look up to.

And God says, "No other gods before me." No other gods before me. Or maybe I'm speaking to a parent and you worship your kids. Have you heard that said? Or maybe you've got a girlfriend or a boyfriend and that girl or boy has replaced God in your affections and become number one and you're sacrificing God to that girl or boyfriend. You can make your husband or your wife your God. You're trying to fill the blank.

You can't quite, and somehow you remain dissatisfied, but God doesn't get in. The first commandment is no other gods before me. That blank I have to fill, and I must be the first and the only object of worship in your life. It's a very relevant commandment, and it has a lot to say to our day and generation.

What we are saying is this, God can never be real to you unless he's central to your life. I meet many people who say to me, "God isn't real, I can't get through to him, I can't feel that he's there." And one of the reasons, not always, but one of the reasons can be that that person does not want God in the middle, but on the edge of life. They want to tack him on to all the rest. They want to have him as an optional extra when they need him.

And God says, "If I'm not Lord of all, I won't be Lord at all." If I'm not in the center, I'm not going to be at the circumference. If I'm not the first in your life, I will not be the second or the third. You will have no other gods beside me.

And that's maybe why people find difficulty getting through to God. They don't want a number one in their life. There's another number one already sitting on the throne. Number two, yes, or maybe even number three, but number one, no. We've come to a big question now, and it's this: Very simply, why should I make God number one in my life? Can you, preacher, give me one good reason why I should obey this commandment? Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Am I not free to choose my own God? Why should I ask God, this God who gave the Ten Commandments, to be first in my life? Why should I, a modern European, believe in the God of the Old Testament?

I will give you the two reasons. That God gave the Jews, they are still the two basic reasons why you should have no other gods in your life.

Number one, reality. Number two, freedom. Let me translate those into simple words. Number one, reality. He is the only God who really exists. That's why you should have no others. He's the only one there is.

And to have any others is to gear your life to fantasy, to live in cloud cuckoo land, to take a trip and have to come back into the world of reality. There are no other gods. That's the first reason. And he gave it to the Jews.

Listen, he said, "I am Jehovah, your God." Do you know what the word Jehovah means? It means I am. In other words, God began the Ten Commandments by saying, "I am, I am." And that's God's name. That's the name that I know of God today.

What is God's name? I am is his name. And Moses, who received the Ten Commandments, said to God, "Who shall I say called?" What is your name? And God said, "I am has called you." Do you know there's not another God in history called I am? Shall I tell you why?

Because he's the only one who is. All the others are not. And that's why nobody ever thought of calling another God I am. Because he's the only one of whom that is true.

You search Fraser's great volumes, The Golden Bough, which examined all the known religions of the world, and you'll never find a God called I am except the God of the Jews. I am.

Every other god is a fantasy. All the gods of the ancient world were a fantasy. They were figments of the imagination. They don't really exist. I've lived in a Muslim country, but I know that Allah doesn't exist. There are many sincere, devout Muslims who bow down many times a day to a god who doesn't exist.

It's tragic. But he's not I am. He's not there.

And when you study all the supernatural gods who've ever been believed in, you're studying man's inventive genius, but you're studying fantasy, not fact. They don't exist. That's why you mustn't have them before God, because they're not there. They're not real.

However much you feel sincere, however you feel that you're meditating profitably, there is no God listening. There's nobody but yourself hearing. They're not there.

Now somebody will say, all right, the supernatural gods aren't there, but my motorbike's there, my children are there, my house is there, my garden is there, that's real enough, is it? You can't say of your motorbike, car, business, house, anything, you can't say, "I'm going to call it, I am," because there will rapidly come a day when you'll have to say, "it was, it was."

That lovely new car you got will be a rusty scrap heap in a few years. And if the person who lives in your house after you is not a gardener, they'll have a wonderful crop of dandelions in no time at all. And that boy or girlfriend is not going to be with you forever.

Even if you marry them, you'll say, "till death us do part." You see, that's not reality, not final reality. All other gods are just not real, not real enough to be God. In fact, all other gods, if they are real, tangibly, materially, you will outlast them.

And there'll come a time when you are left without them. I care not what you worship, what you devote your time to, what you feel makes life for you. One day you'll be without it.

And how can you call it a good God, a real God, when you're going to have to survive without it?

So that's the first reason. I am Jehovah. I am. I am your God. I am. I'm real. I exist. And that's why you should have no other gods.

That's one very good reason. Because there are no others.

And the second reason he gives them is this: I am Jehovah. I am your God. And I brought you out of slavery in Egypt.

The second reason is, he's not only the only God who exists, he's the only God who saves and sets free. Every other God will enslave you, enslave you.

This God sets you free.

There'd been a time when those Jews had been chained and whipped every day, made to make bricks without straw, heavy clay bricks that they could hardly lift, and their life was misery, and their children were thrown in the Nile to the crocodiles.

That had been their life, but God set them free. And God says, "no, no other gods." I've set you free. Don't go back into slavery. Don't become gripped again by something else or someone else. I want you to be free.

And that indeed is God's purpose in giving us this commandment that we should be free.

Let me go back to my friend Ken. Ken plays football again now. He's a Baptist minister down in Hastings. And he plays for a Hastings football team as his spare time occupation.

But he will tell you this: I can enjoy football now without being enslaved by it. Go back to Miss Clark, and Miss Clark, after some years without any contact with any baby, the Lord led her and put her in charge of a Salvation Army orphanage where she had more babies than she'd ever had before to look after.

But Miss Clark said this, she could now enjoy them without making them her God. She was free, really free.

What is your God? What is the name of your God?

I'll tell you this, if it's not Jehovah, then you are becoming enslaved to something or someone. Your life is being so bound up with that someone or something that you could never be free, and you're not even free to enjoy that God because you're becoming enslaved.

That's what the commandment is all about.

God didn't make these commandments to spoil our fun and to make life narrow and miserable. He made these commandments that we might be free.

And in his service is perfect freedom.

And he says no other gods for just these two reasons. Number one, I'm the only God there is. And I want your life to be geared to reality, not to fantasy.

And number two, I'm not only the only God who exists, I'm the only God who can set you free.

All the others will make slaves of you.

Are those two good enough reasons?

The ancient gods and the modern gods that people worship are not so different from each other. Study the gods and you find Bacchus, the god of wine, and you find today people enslaved by wine.

You find the goddess of love and people enslaved by sex.

You find this God and that God and the other God, and you'll find all the ancient gods that still worship today, maybe not under the same name, but it's the same false God.

And God says, I've come to set you free from all that. And I've come to bring you out, and I've come to give you life.

You ask me what the name of my God is, I'll tell you. It's not Jehovah. It's the same person, but I've got a different name. I don't use that name.

Sometimes, yes, but very rarely.

Shall I tell you the name of my God? The name of my God is Father. Father.

How did I ever get that name to use of my God?

The answer is because one day there was a Jew born who was his son.

And for the first time a man walked this earth who kept all the Ten Commandments perfectly and who wouldn't have anything to do with any other God.

And the result was he was the most free man who ever lived.

And that free man enjoyed the things of God, but was never enslaved by them.

And that free man who was God's son called God Father.

And he said, you can call him that too if you love me. That's freedom.

The law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

And it's the truth that sets you free.

Well, what is the name of your God?

Mine's Father, the Father of Jesus. Mine too.

What a God. Father, we thank you that you fill that hollow right up.

We thank you that when you're at the center of life, life is so free, so good.

But Lord, we're tempted on every hand to fill the blank with something else. Help us to keep this commandment.

Have mercy upon us.

And write this law on our hearts.

We beseech you, for Christ's sake.

Amen.