Ten Commandments Part 5
Commandment 1 Exodus 20:2-6 (Protestants Exodus 20:2-3)
“I am the
Lord your God” identifies who is speaking.
It is not just some absent, almighty potentate, but Yahweh, a personal
God – “your God.” The Hebrew word “your”
is singular. “Who brought you out”
speaks to the benefits and mercies bestowed on us by a God of love. We are to revere the glorious and awesome
name of the God who created us (Deuteronomy 28:58). Gratitude for His many benefits and mercies
given us should lead us to a desire of obedience.
The 1st
commandment is one of the commandments that Catholics and Lutherans divide
differently than the Protestants do.
Catholics and Lutherans consider Exodus 20:2-6 as commandment 1. Protestants consider verses 2-3 as
commandment 1 and 4-6 as commandment 2.
For this reason we will divide this discussion into four parts, with parts
3-4 corresponding to the Protestant’s commandment 2.
In many
ways the 1st commandment is the most important one. All of the others hinge on it. It speaks of having God as the center of
one’s life. If He is not the center,
then it is very easy to violate one of the others. If you make anything but God the center of
your life, or love anything more than God, or live for anything other than God,
it will strangle you. You will become
enslaved to it. God desires to free us
from this form of slavery.
Commandment 1 Part 1 (Protestants:
commandment 1) “I am the Lord your God.”
God’s first word comes in the
context of salvation from slavery. It is
given in the context of freedom. It is
the same word that comes to us: “I am the Lord your God.” We don’t need to chase after a god to
worship. God has come down to us. He seeks us.
His call to Israel is the same call given to us. “Because of what I have done for you, give
yourself totally to me. Not out of
coercion, not out of duty, but out of love.”
He tells us we can rely on him.
This is
perhaps the most important of the commandments, for if God is not our God,
something else is. As Bob Dylan wrote
” But
you’re going to have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re going to have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re going to have to serve somebody”
Any other God will enslave us, If we don’t have a right
relationship with God, we are more likely to violate one or more of the other
commandments.
Commandment 1 Part 2 (Protestants:
commandment 1) “You shall have no other gods before me.”
The Hebrew text literally says
“You shall have no other Gods before my face.”
We are not to worship other gods alongside worshipping our God. He is to be our exclusive God. This is perhaps one of the greatest
temptations we face today – to have another god along side of God. When we do, we are saying that He isn’t
powerful enough or authentic enough to meet our needs. There are four gods we are most tempted to
worship: power, control, approval, and comfort.[1] They aren’t necessarily evil in
themselves. They only become so when
they become obsessions, when we love them so much we can’t get along without
them. At that point they have become our
God. If power is your God you will
become domineering, harsh, even abusive.
You will put yourself ahead of others.
If control is your God, you’ll worry all the time, losing your temper a
lot and manipulating others to get your way.
If approval is your God, your life will be plagued by constant
self-pity, envy, hurt feeling, and inadequacy.
If comfort is your God you won’t be able to say “no” to the pleasures of
food, sex, drugs or pornography. You will be afflicted by affluent consumerism,
seeking material possessions. This was
the problem of the rich young ruler. He
couldn’t let go of his possessions. They
had become his god. A Jewish scholar
reflecting on this says “In regard to external gifts, to outward possessions,
there is only one proper attitude – to have them and be able to do without
them.”[2] When
we can’t have this attitude we are in danger of putting something before
God.
To say we will
have no other gods means God will be our only God. We will have no hidden lust or sin in our
soul that enslaves us. God is the only
one we will worship, not money, status, sex, etc. We will love him, fear him and praise him (Mt
22:37).
Ernst
Lange wrote a small booklet on the Ten Commandments, focusing on how God
desires us to be freed from being enslaved to negative passions in life. He included a prayer with each commandment.
As we go through the commandments we will close them with his prayer for that
commandment.
“You
wanted me to be free, Lord. But I have
wasted the freedom which you gave me.
There was always something that I relied on more than you: my own
strength, or the influence of other people, money, the stars, or public
opinion. Now I have become a slave to my
own fear and lust: and I live among people for whom it is just the same. And
the enslavement gets worse and worse! We
deserve it, Lord, that you should let us perish in our bondage and that we
should lose you for all eternity. We
cannot help ourselves, Lord, but be merciful and let us be free again.”[3]
Food for thought
1.
Does
my daily life reflect that God is my only God?
2.
What
other gods am I tempted to worship?
3.
How is
Lange’s prayer helpful in understanding how we can place other gods alongside
of God?
[1] J
D Greear, “Dismantling Your Heart’s Idols” https://www.patheos.com/blogs/evangelicalpulpit/2016/01/dismantling-your-heart-idols/
(Accessed 2/10/19.
[2]
Abraham Heschel, Between God and Man: an
Interpretation of Judaism (New York: The Free Press, 1965), p 222.
[3]
Ernst Lange, Ten Great Freedoms (Downers
Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1970), p 22.
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