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\u201cIt is the Lord your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him\u201d (Deuteronomy 13:4).

Moses is guilty of repeating himself. But maybe that was a good thing for Israel and is a good thing for us. Israel had already shown that she would quit quickly pursue other gods. Are we any different? So, Moses continues to hammer home the warning, \u201cdon\u2019t serve other gods and go worshipping them.\u201d

Recall, that God\u2019s call to exclusive worship and obedience always comes after his work of redemption. He is not a vindictive God who puts impossible demands on people so that he can punish them when they do reach the mark. God redeems us in Christ and then calls us to live in the ways of his kingdom; to enter the rest from evil that freedom from sinful living offers us.

Even though God offers us so much, we still tend to find other gods. Let me give two examples. Many of you will be familiar with the song, \u201cHeart of Worship\u201d. Here is part of the story behind it. The church in which that song was formed, went through a period of apathy. The people were coming to church to \u2018consume\u2019 a worship service.

And so, the leadership did a very brave thing. They got rid of the sound system and the music teams for a season. They had lost their way in worship, and the way to get back to the heart would be to strip everything away. The only instrument left was the human voice. The pastor asked a very simple question, \u201cWhen you come through the doors on a Sunday, what are you bringing as your offering to God?\u201d

Out of that context comes this line, \u201cI'm coming back to the heart of worship, and it's all about You, it's all about You, Jesus.\u201d We are coming slowly out of this pandemic. Our worship teams are going to be leading us again in worship. But what are we coming for? What are we bringing to God? Maybe these are the very questions that God is asking us these days.

And now a second illustration. As I have mentioned before, over the past decade many Christian leaders that we all admired have turned out to be deeply flawed. These revelations have been profoundly disturbing. As someone asked me recently, \u201cIn such a context, how do we recover the beauty of the Christian faith?\u201d I like that question, but it assumes a prior question, \u201cWhy is Christianity so ugly these days?\u201d

A good part of the answer is that Christians have not been worshipping the God of the Bible. We have worshipped our leaders as much as we have been worshipping Jesus. One of the common themes among all these fallen leaders is that as their fame grew, people stopped questioning them. Whatever they said was considered gospel. Its also true that many of these leaders got rid of anyone who questioned them.

Someone translated our text this way, \u201cAfter the Lord your God you must walk, him you must fear, his commands you must keep, his voice you must hear, him you must serve, him you must cling to.\u201d

Our text calls us to be a people who consciously living with this orientation. Moses calls us to commit ourselves to God so that we will have the spiritual health and vitality to recognize idols and reject their enticement. Let it be all about Jesus.