The Ten Commandments are important for four reasons:

  • This is the only place in Exodus that God speaks directly to His people (Exodus 20:1). Every other time, His words are mediated through Moses.
  • They are recorded twice (Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5).
  • They are inscribed on a tablet of stone by God’s Finger (Exodus 31:18, Deuteronomy 9:10).
  • As seen throughout the four gospels, Jesus both obeys and teaches them.

However, before studying the Ten Commandments, it is important to recognize that God’s saving grace precedes obeying His law. Like born again believers today, God’s people at that time (the Israelites), desired to obey God because they had already been saved, not because they needed to earn salvation. Scripture is very clear that God was giving the law to believers to prevent them from walking in sin and was not an instrument to bring them to belief (Exodus 20:1-2). It is also important to note that the Ten Commandments are divided into two sections: Commandments one through four give us our responsibility to God while Commandments five through ten communicates our responsibility to each other. For this posting, we will focus on the first commandment which is You shall have no other gods before me (Exodus 20:3; Deuteronomy 5:7).

So, why would a monotheistic nation need this command? The answer is that Israel struggled with idolatry. The gods of Egypt, where they previously lived for 430 years, called for their attention. In Exodus 32, we see that they temporarily worshiped a golden calf and were admonished by Moses for doing so. Joshua, at the end of his life, tells the Israelites to “Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and Egypt and serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:14). At the heart of this command is that God’s people are not allowed to have divided loyalties. Now, you may never bow down to a stone statue or offer incense to a handcrafted deity; however, today’s Christian is still very much tempted to break this command because we live in a culture committed to and saturated with relativism and pluralism. Relativism says there is no absolute truth and that it is possible to adopt differing truths; thus, just choose your truth(s). Pluralism says that the only way you can peacefully live in a society where people have different beliefs is to adopt relativism.  Today’s culture says the following to the Christ follower: “You are exclusive and exclusivity is the one sin left in our society.” Brothers and sisters, when faced with this cultural resistance, we must respond by saying that “You may worship your god, but I will only worship the one true God.”  Now to be certain that we are doing just that, we should ask ourselves two additional diagnostic questions: 1) What do I love? and 2) What do I trust? For Christian people who live in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, our love is where we spend our discretionary time and money. Is God, His people and His worship primary or secondary in your life? And, if the answer is secondary, what corrective action will you take?….

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