3rd October 2025

3rd October 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Exodus 20:1-3 focus v3)


Message (Alan Burke)


The motivation of why we do things is known only to us. It might seem to the watching world that we are doing something because we love someone but we may only be doing that because we just don’t want a sore ear if we don’t do it. There can be lots of things like that in our lives. Or how about not doing something because we don’t want to face the consequences. Our motivation is not because we want to, instead it is just because we want to avoid the consequences. Our motivation for how we live as those who are the children of God, who are his, who have been bought with a price is not because we want to avoid the sore ear or we don’t want to face the consequences, rather our motivation is because of the grace that we have been shown. 


That response to God’s grace in our lives demands our devotion. God’s grace insists upon, expects our devotion, that our lives would be lived in light of what he has done. And before everything else, our response to the Grace of God is we as his people are to have no other gods before him. What God means when he instructs us as his people that we are to have no other gods before him, is that what he requires of his people is our exclusive devotion. 


Not just externally but internally. From the outside it might be easy to have the appearance that we have no other gods before him but the Lord is speaking to our hearts. What it speaks of is not bowing down and worshiping false gods but when we look to anything other than him for our hope, when we trust in anything other than God for our security, when we seek satisfaction in anything other than God, when we love people or things more than God ( see Phil 3:19). The Lord wants the complete devotion of his people in every way. When we look to anything other than him for our hope, when we trust in anything other than God for our security, when we seek satisfaction in anything other than God, when we love people or things more than God then we have put these things before him and we have broken the 1st commandment.


The Lord wants our devotion. As his people we should look to what he has done of us, the grace that he has shown to us, not because we were deserving but because of his free grace that he chose us in Christ from before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. (Eph 1:4–6). None of us though have kept this commandment, but instead of leading us to despair we need to know that God’s grace is sufficient, for all who are unfaithful to him there is mercy, for there is one who kept the law on our behalf, the one that has done all that we could not, and all who turn to Christ Jesus, who repent of their sin, who fall before him abandoning any hope they have in their endeavours or works, they will know the grace of God, the salvation that only he can give. Only then when we realise who he is and what he has done will we desire to live lives in devotion to him, forsaking all other gods, we want to have nothing before him.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q90 How is the Word to be read and heard, that it may become effectual to salvation?
A. That the Word may become effectual to salvation, we must attend thereunto with diligence, preparation, and prayer; receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts, and practice it in our lives.
​