Committed to Exclusive Allegiance: Linking Deuteronomy 5:7 and Revelation
On January 16 of this year I preached a sermon in seminary chapel as we kicked off a series on the Ten Commandments. The text assigned to me was Deuteronomy 5:7, “You shall have no other gods at my side.” Basing my sermon on this single verse, I was asked to develop the topic “Committed to Exclusive Allegiance.”
By my count, there are more than seventy allusions to Deuteronomy in the Book of Revelation. Even though this first of the Ten Commandments is not alluded to directly, it certainly is the backdrop for all that John wrote:
- It was God who gave the revelation.
- It is God alone whom we are to worship (Rev. 4:1ff.; 13:1ff.; 22:9).
- It is God Almighty who will bring about judgment on those who do not pledge their allegiance to him as well as on those who abandon their allegiance.
It is obvious that one of the key themes in both Deuteronomy and Revelation is the exclusive allegiance God expected from the people under the Old Covenant, expected from the Christians in the first century, and continues to expect from those of us today who live under the New Covenant. The people in Moses’ day succumbed to the worship of false gods in Egypt, and the three sermons by Moses in Deuteronomy were preached with the conviction that the second generation of Hebrews could well succumb to the unknown gods they were about to encounter as they crossed the Jordan and entered Canaan. And of course, Christians at the end of the first century were being tempted to worship the gods of the Roman Empire, including the worship of Caesar. I believe that America is one of the most idol-worshipping countries on the face of the earth. There is not a one of us who has not broken the other nine commandments because we first broke the one commanding us to have no God but Yahweh. The first commandment is timeless. We too must obey the first of the ten commandments, the one commandment that is the foundation for not only the remaining nine but for all commandments found in Scripture.
I invite you to listen to the sermon. Listen and ask: Are you and I willing to offer such radical allegiance while living in such a relativistic age?
Listen to the sermon on the LCCS Podcast site
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