The First Commandment
In His own voice, our Creator gave us The Ten Commandments. Since our Creator designed us, He knows what is best for us and He gave us these simple yet highly complex laws for our personal benefit. God’s relationship with mankind is individual – each of us is unique and each of us must be responsible for following God’s plan for our lives. Yet, each one of us has “free will”: we can follow God’s ways to find contentment and fulfillment in life or we can throw it all away. It’s up to you. Start here with the 1st Commandment.
Here is the 1st Commandment:
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Exodus 20:3; Deuteronomy 5:7 (KJV 1900)
Why not?
3 “You shall have no other gods before me. Exodus 20:3; Deuteronomy 5:7 (NIV)
Because unless you understand your relationship with the universe, with all that exists and with God, your Creator, your mind, your thought processes, your ability to think and reason cogently, your relationship to other people and indeed all of your life will be skewed.
Understanding that God is supreme, above all people and all things is the first step to understanding who and what you are.
Failing to understand that God is supreme allows a man (or woman) to think and act as if he were god. One who doesn’t understand and hold God as the first cause, the sustainer of our lives, the provider of our very breath of life, may come to think that he is able (with no help outside himself) to discern right from wrong – the good from the bad – or to determine the origin of the universe and all that is in it.
Anything or any person that holds pre-eminence in your life other than God becomes your “god”. It could be drugs, sex, alcohol or power; it could be some minister or preacher or priest that you place between you and God; it could be many things but most often it is our own arrogance, insolence and ignorance that comes between us and God.
The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome about this very thing and described the consequences:
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. Romans 1:18–32 (NIV84)
Does this sound like our culture today?
Our culture – including many professing Christians – either do not understand or ignore the lessons for life contained in the First Commandment.
Have you given it much thought? I recommend highly that you do so.
