I Am Your God Series

When the Jesus is doing his work about 1400 years later, the Romans are the major world power. They were still worshipping multiple gods. It won’t be for about another 700 years after the death of Christ that another nation, another religion says there is only one god.

So for the Israelites to worship only one god, the God, was a huge deal. No one else was doing it. No one had done it before them. And it would be long time after them before anyone else does.

And here is God saying, “I’m it. You can only worship me because I am the only God there is.”

So here it is. The main reason that people have looked to multiple gods is to find the answers to all of life’s questions.

God says, “Enough.”

You’re having crop issues? Then come to me. You’re having money problems? Then come to me. Marriage on the rocks? Come to me. You have a grandchild born? Bring me the praise. Just get a promotion at work? Bring me the glory.

You see he’s God. He not only deserves that kind of respect. He wants it from us.

And he tells us this because he knows that it’s in you and it’s in me to look in every direction other than his when these things and more occur in our live.

Just a couple of weeks ago one of my coworkers came up to me at work. He was all excited. He had just gotten engaged and they have a wedding planned for this September. Now he’s my age and so I asked him why he waited until now to get married.

He told me it wasn’t like he hadn’t been this close before. But every single time he had gotten engaged the girl had issued him an ultimatum. It was either hunting or them. You see, this coworker doesn’t just hunt. He hunts all the time. He goes out for pheasant, quail, grouse, turkey, and deer, for every available hunting session, bow, musket, rifle. He told me he makes trips for elk every couple of years to Colorado. Last year he even got one of the big game sheep. And when he isn’t hunting he’s out at a shooting range practicing his shooting so he won’t miss the target when he goes hunting.

He may not ever realize it but he just got done telling me what the god of his life is. Being married is important to him. But hunting is more important.

The sad thing is that we all have moments like that. We all have thing that we put first before God. It’s easy to do. The moment that our lives become too busy or cluttered with useless things the first thing that we throw away is our personal relationship with God. And those little things that shouldn’t have been so important take a lead role in our lives.

God wants control of all those things.

The second commandment is very similar to the first one. So let’s go on ahead and read that one. Beginning in verse 4, “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.”

Now there are a lot of people, including some Christians, that believe that this commandment is just a continuation of the first oen. And if you were to look at it quickly it certainly might seem to be. But this one is different.