So these do the same thing today, they begin to show us what is important to God and one of the things we see here is that the most important thing to God is our integrity and fidelity in relationships. These 10 Commandments aren’t just arbitrary rules or laws to follow; they are the key to establishing and maintaining healthy and strong relationships with God, and with our family, our community and even with ourselves. What will be important for us to remember as we study these commandments is that what God is most concerned about is not the letter of the law but the strength of our relationships, it is relationships that these laws seek to establish, protect and strengthen.
Clearly the first and most important relationship we need to focus on is our relationship with God, so God says; you shall have no other god before me. God is making an exclusive4 claim on his people. He wants them to worship and serve Him alone and no one else. Notice that God does not say there are no other gods. Remember that for generations they lived in Egypt where all they saw and heard about were the gods of Egypt, in fact the Pharaoh himself was considered to be a god, and after the people leave the desert of Sinai they are going to travel throughout the region of Palestine and encounter many different tribes who worshipped a variety of gods and so God makes clear that they were not to consider any of them as their god, they were to have only one God. So in this first commandment God is establishing a unique relationship with the people he first chosen through Abraham. God is the one who chose them and God is the one who now leads them and God is the one who wants to be their God.
Today this first commandment still makes clear that God wants to be our God and that he doesn’t want to share that place in our hearts and lives with anyone or anything else and he tells us that the only way this will happen is if we place God at the very center of lives. A lot of time when we talk about worshipping only God we talk about making God number one, but Mark Mitchell, pastor of Central Peninsula Church in CA says that God doesn’t want to be number one on our list, God wants to be the One and only thing in the center of it all. God wants to be the hub of the wheel that holds every spoke of our life together. If we simply place God at the top of the list then whatever is number 2 or 3 or 4 becomes a rival - ready to take on God, but God wants no rivals – God wants to be the center of every other priority and focus and ambition and goal in our lives. I like this distinction. Instead of saying God needs to come before family, country or job we need to ask how God can be the center of our family, our love and commitment to our country or our job. God wants to be the center of it all – that’s what it means to have no other god and that is what it means to worship god alone and the truth is that once we make God the primary relationship in our lives - the rest of life and the rest of our relationships and priorities can become healthy and strong.
It’s vital for us to place God at the center of our lives because we have been created to have God at the center of our lives so until we get this right, nothing else in live will be balanced or blessed. If we look at the creation story we see that human beings are unique because God breathed his life into us. Deep within us is God’s life and I don’t believe we are fully satisfied in this life until we are in fellowship with God. If we look at the world today, I think what we see bears this out. Even though we may see the world as an increasing secular place where people are not interested in a relationship with God, the truth is that most people in the world today do connect with a god in some way. In 2009, 73% of the world identified themselves as being part of one of the worlds 4 largest religions, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. In fact, only 12% of the world identified themselves as being non-religious, which shows us that most people feel this need or desire to have the presence a god in their lives. The French philosopher Blaise Paschal calls this a god-shaped hole that we all have and we simply aren’t satisfied in life until we fill that hole or connect with God in some way. So we were created to be in a relationship with God. We were created to worship God and part of what this means is that we need to give God our adoration, our trust and our thanksgiving.
God wants our adoration. God wants to be the One we can’t stop talking about, the One who captures are attention and imagination and the one who captivates our heart. God also wants our trust, which means God wants to be the One we depend on for everything and the One in whom we find security and peace and the One we turn to in times of need. And God desires our thanksgiving, he wants to be the One we thank when we have a little or when we have a lot because we know that no matter what we have it all comes from him. When all this begins to happens, when we begin to truly adore and trust and give thanks to God in all circumstances, the God we know God is making his way to the center of it all. And it’s important for God to be at the center because if God isn’t there, then something else will be.
If God doesn’t fill the hole in our lives, then something else will. Deuteronomy 11:16 says, take care, or you will be seduced into turning away and serving other gods and worshipping them. I have to say that Dtr. 11:16 has not been a passage that I have often thought about, but I now find it very profound and maybe one of the most important passages in the Bible. If we aren’t worshipping God we will worship something else and no matter what it is, no matter how good it is, if it is not God, in time it will destroy us.
Let’s look at Israel, the other gods they were tempted to worship were the gods of other nations. There was the god Ba’al that we read about a lot in the Old Testament, but there is also the god Molech and the god Mammon. These were three of the most common gods that Israel encountered as they traveled through the wilderness and what is interesting is that each of these gods represented forces or powers that are still strong today. Ba’al was also known as the god of fertility, or sex. Moloch was the god of strength or power, and Mammon the god of money. Sex, power, money – three forces that are still with us and three forces that can destroy us if they become the center of our lives – if you don’t believe this, ask New York congressman Anthony Wiener? He is an example of what can happen when sex or power becomes the center of our lives. We end up doing things we would never do otherwise because at the center of our lives isn’t God but a force or a drive or a false god that will destroy us.
So we need to place God at the center of our lives and God has promised that when we do this, all other relationships will grow stronger. It is not a coincidence that this is the first commandment, it all flows from this – if God is at the center then we can move on to other commands and other relationships, but if God is not at the center then none of the rest of these commandments really matter because the strength for life and faith and obedience comes from God and God alone.
So we need to place God at the center because we were created for this primary relationship and it is the foundation on which everything else is built, but if we go back to Exodus 20, we see two other reasons why we need to worship God alone. Exodus 20:2 Now remember, Egypt was the dominant world power at this time and Pharaoh was considered to be a god, but then the God of Israel comes along and shows the Israelites and the people of Egypt and Pharaoh himself who is really in charge and who is really all powerful. God sent 10 plagues on Egypt and humbled the nation; God led his people out of Egypt and then parted the Red Sea to really set them free and overcame his enemy in the process and through it all God reminded Israel, and us, that he is the one true power in this world – there is no greater power than God and that alone should be a good reason to worship him above all other gods, but there is another reason here. When God says, your God, the word your is singular. God is talking to individual people here, God doesn’t just want to be a power of a people – he wants to be the savior and shepherd of our souls. God is not an impersonal king standing far away, He is a personal loving God who wants to know us and wants us to be known by us. So the most powerful force in all of creation and only true God wants to know us and love us and simply wants us to love him in return.
Jesus talks about the personal nature of God when he says that every hair of our head is known and numbered by God and that every aspect of our lives is known and cared about by God. There is nothing we go through that God doesn’t know about and God loves us more than we can possibly imagine, so why would we worship anything else when God is all powerful? Why would we worship anyone else when God is the most loving? And why would we worship anything else when life won’t be complete until God is at the center? So we know we should have no other god at the center of our lives, but is God there?
To answer that question and reflect on the place God has in our lives, Win Green encourages us to take the three book test. What does our date-book, checkbook and the good-book say about God’s place in our lives? What does our date-book or calendar say about how and where we spend our time? If we spend no time with God then how can God truly be at the center? Do we set apart time for God each day? Do we set apart time for God each week? (now obviously all of you do this because you are here today – so that is a good first step, but can we go deeper?). And it’s not about giving God our left over time; can we give God our best time and some of our undivided attention?
To see if God is at the center of our lives we also need to look at our checkbook. Remember, one of the gods of the Old Testament was Mammon, or wealth and money. If someone where to look at our spending habits for a month would they be able to see that God is at the center of our lives? Do we tithe, or give 10% to God? Do we support the work of God in the church and around the world? Do we spend money wisely and not accumulate huge amounts of debt? Do our purchases reflect the values of God’s kingdom? What does our checkbook, or our spending habits, say about the place God has in our lives?
And then there is the good-book test, how often do we read our Bibles? If the Bible is God’s main way of communication with us then we have to ask ourselves if we are spending time listening to him. Can we really have any healthy relationship with God if we don’t take the time to listen? Can we have healthy marriages without listening? Can we be good parents without listening? Can we be good neighbors without listening? Can we be good children of God without listening? Can we really say God is at the center of our lives without taking the time to listen to his word?
This three book test can help us begin to see what is really at the center of our lives, and if it isn’t God then we need to make the decision today to place God at the center. If you are thinking that God is not the center of all you do and all that you are, then you can do something about that today, right now, you can simply ask God to be the center of your life. If you have been reflecting on your life and realize that God has kind of slipped out of the center and you want him back there, you can do that today with a simple prayer. The good news is that we don’t have to put God at the center once everything else is worked out, in fact, the only way other issues in our life will get worked out is by asking God to be the center. I want to invite you to do that today. Let us take this moment, at the beginning of this series and this summer to make God the center of all that we are and all that we do. If you want to experience this new abundant life, if you want to experience the power of God and the wonder of God and the blessing of God, then I invite you to pray with me…
God, I confess that you have not always been at the center of my life. I have chased after and loved other gods who have enticed me away from you. I have allowed my time, attention and treasure to focus on inferior practices, but today I come to re-commit myself to you. You alone are God. You alone are the one who breathed into me your life and spirit and today I know that I will not be satisfied until I place you at the center. So I ask you, almighty God, to be the center of my life. Be the center of every priority, every goal, every dream and desire. I place you at the centre because you alone are worthy because you alone are God. AMEN.
