And God spoke all these words: I am the
Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the
land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.
In the book, The Doctor Of Crows Nest, and old doctor
Ferguson fell in love with the hands of young Barney Boyle.
"You must be a surgeon, Barney," he said. "You've got the
fingers and the nerves!" Barney was hesitant, but the
doctor pointed out all the advantages and the help he could
be to others. He concluded, "Ah, boy, God knows I'd give
my life to be a great surgeon. But He didn't give me the
fingers. I haven't the touch. But you have! You have the
nerve and the fingers and the mechanical ingenuity; you can
be a great surgeon. You shall have all my time and all my
books and all my money; I'll put you through! You must
think, dream, sleep, eat, drink bones and muscles and sinews
and nerves! Push everything else aside! He cried waving his
great hands excitedly. And remember!.... here his voice took
a solemn tone...let nothing share your heart with your
knife."
Here is an earthly example of the motivation behind the
first commandment. God had great ambitions for Israel. He
wanted a people who would be an instrument of His grace
and love to all the world. Though them He would bring into
the world the Great Physician, who alone would succeed as
an effective surgeon against sin. God had great plans, just
as the doctor did for young Barney, but both God and
doctor Ferguson had the same obstacle to overcome, and
that was the free will of man that can choose, not only less
than the best, but even the worst. Barney could choose to be
a bum and waste his gifts, and Israel could choose to go a
whoring after other gods and bring disgrace upon the name
of Jehovah. As a matter of fact, that is exactly what
happened, and it proves the point that free will is the basic
problem in the God-man relationship. Until the will is
submissive there is no way that man can be successful in
fulfilling the plan of God.
God must win our obedience to the first commandment
or the rest of them become meaningless. If we are not
absolutely loyal to Him and Him alone, we will not be
concerned about being loyal to His standard of morality. Dr.
Ferguson said "if you want to be a successful surgeon you
must let nothing share your heart with your knife." God is
saying in this first commandment, "if you want to be
successful in living a life pleasing to me, let nothing share
your heart with you love for me." In other words, make me
your first priority in all of life. All other loves, such as family,
friends, and neighbors must be subordinate to your love for
me. Love for God must be first and foremost, always.
Thoreau said, "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say,
let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a
thousand-simplify, simplify." God will not settle even for
two or three, however, but demands we simplify down to one
ultimate loyalty. This is what the first commandment is all
about. Let's look at the implication of this first
commandment.
The first implication of this commandment is that God
has made man free to defy His sovereignty. God does not
impose the benefits of His acts of grace upon man without
their consent. By shear power God brought Israel out of
Egypt, but He did not by shear power compel them to
acknowledge Him as their God. For their good He
commands that they do so, but the very existence of the
command implies that they have the freedom to do
otherwise. They demonstrated their freedom time and time
again by defying this first commandment. The whole history
of the sufferings of Israel is the history of their disobedience
to the first commandment. Yet, God did not by shear force
ever compel them to obey it as he compelled the water of the
Red Sea to separate. Taking Israel out of Egypt was simple
compared to the task of taking Egypt out of Israel. The first
was a matter of power, but the second called for the
cooperation of man's will.
God's sovereignty does not play the same role in the
moral and spiritual realm as it does in the physical. He does
not force men into submission. The poet wrote-
And He that looketh wide and high,
Nor pauses in His plan,
Will take the sun out of the sky,
Ere freedom out of man.
In the very giving of the law God respects man's freedom,
but He gives them the law as another act of sovereign grace,
knowing that if they use their freedom to choose His will
they will find what is best in life for themselves. Israel will
become degraded, like all the surrounding nations, if she
does not freely choose to obey the law of God. When the
Jews chose not to follow the law they entered into the
bondage of fear and foolish superstition. They became
idolatrous and immoral, and only after the wrath of God
sent them into captivity did they finally learn how to use
their freedom to choose loyalty to God.
Freedom, which is man's greatest asset, is also his greatest
problem, until he learns to yield it up to God. Obedience to
the first commandment is not forced on us, but for those who
are looking for a shortcut to Gods best this is the
commandment to obey. We are free to be fools, but God
gave us the history of His people's response to this
commandment to help us avoid the folly of trying to find
happiness apart from obedience to it.
God honored man as the only creature on earth that has
the ability to choose to obey or defy His commandments.
God in His sovereignty has determined that He will not force
you to do His will, but He will require you to pay the price of
choosing wrong. The chemist can do as he pleases with his
chemicals, but if he does not respect the laws of chemistry he
may suddenly find himself leaving his lab by the way of the
roof. We are equally free to defy the moral laws of God, but
we are not free to escape the judgement that will result from
our bad choice. All of life revolves around the choices that
we make. We are not responsible for the outcome, but we
are responsible for the choices we make. Bonaro
Overstreet's oft-quoted words speak to this issue.
You say the little efforts that I make
Will do no good: They never will prevail
To tip the hovering scale
Where justice hangs in the balance.
I I don't think I ever thought they would.
But I am prejudiced beyond debate
In favor of my right to choose which side
Shall feel the stubborn ounces of my weight.
The first commandment is God's calling to man to choose
Him and His will as the first priority in their lives. This
choice is the key to their own happiness.
The second implication we want to consider is that this
first commandment implies that there are other gods. That
sounds shocking when you hear it for the first time, but it
becomes a commonplace piece of information as you read
the commentaries. This first commandment clearly forbids
other gods being worshipped, but it does not state that there
are no other gods to be worshipped. It only states that for
Israel there is to be only one God. He was the only God, but
the existence of other gods is not denied. If there were no
other gods, what would be the point of forbidding anyone to
worship them?
When we consider the polytheism all around Israel, we
know the many gods who were worshipped were not
objectively real, but they were very definitely subjectively
real. They captured the loyalties of men, and did so with
Israel as well. In other words, non-existent gods are still very
real and God has to compete with them for man's loyalty. If
the false gods of the pagans were not a real threat to Israel's
right relationship to God, He never would have bothered to
make their exclusion a part of the first commandment.
God is actually the author of a gods are dead movement.
He seeks to get them excluded from the consciousness of His
people so that they die from neglect. God is all for any
movement that kills off and eliminates some of the millions of
false gods men have created. It sounds strange, but as
monotheists, who believe in only one God, we must
constantly be on guard against all kinds of real non-existent
gods. What is all amounts to is that there is only one capital
God, but a multitude of small gods which run all the way
from figments of the imagination to objectively existent
fallen creatures such as Satan, the god of this world.
The problem of non-existent gods hit the early church
and though Paul knew they did not exist, he also recognized
that some Christians believed in them because of their
former lives of idolatry. For the sake of these Christians the
stronger Christians were not to eat meat offered to a
non-existent god, because the god was real to the weaker
Christian. In other words, it is possible for a Christian to
believe in the actual reality of other gods. Paul says in I Cor.
8:4-7, "So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We
know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that
there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods,
whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many
"gods" and many "lords"), yet for us there is but one God,
the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we
live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom
all things came and through whom we live. But not
everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to
idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having
been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak,
it is defiled."
We see then, that both in the Old Testament and the New
Testament there is a process of education necessary to bring
men to the point of recognizing one, and only one, God. God
did not start by saying there are no other gods, but rather,
do not put other gods before me. If you are talking with
someone and they inquire about Allah and the gods of other
people, do not waste your time trying to disprove the
existence of these gods. Even as non-existent gods they have
great influence. Your primary task is to point them to the
God of revelation and urge them to put their trust in Him.
The issue is not whether there are other gods or not, but
whether or not they have surrendered to the God who has
provided their Savior in Jesus Christ.
The Bible does not try to prove God's existence, but urges
men to put their faith in Him and obey His revealed will.
Clovis Chappel says you could be out on the desert dying of
thirst and find evidence that water is somewhere nearby, but
the evidence will not save you without a drink of the actual
water. No one can live on proof of the existence of water.
They need to experience the life giving qualities of actual
water. So it is with God. Proofs of His existence are no
more satisfying than proofs of the existence of water. Men
must respond to God's revelation in faith to experience the
reality of God. Thomas Hardy sat in a church service and
felt so lonely because he had not responded in faith to the
God of the worshippers. He wrote-
Heart of mine knows not that ease
Which they know, since it be
That he who breathes "all's well" to these
Breathes no "all's well" to me.
God breathes His all's well only to those, who out of a
multitude of gods, and possible ultimate values, will choose
to put Him first. Even though He is the only objectively
eternal God, yet men must choose Him above all the
influential non-existent gods to gain His salvation.
In Japan, those who respond to the gospel are often so
grateful for the knowledge of one God after having eight
hundred thousand to choose from. It gives unity to life, and
with one God to concentrate upon they can get to know
Him. This is one of God's major purposes in this first
commandment. God wants to be known, and the best way
for man to get to know Him is by concentration on Him
alone as ones ultimate relationship. We will focus on this in
the next chapter.
