Dr. Ron Sumners
February 8, 2004
In 2003 the Ten Commandments was front page news. There was a five ton granite monument in the Alabama Supreme Court building placed there by Chief Justice Roy Moore. He was ordered to remove the monument. He refused. It set off a storm of protest, controversy and debate.
My purpose is not to promote either side of the controversy of whether the Ten Commandments should be publicly displayed. I would simply like for us, over the next several weeks, to look at the Commandments themselves. I am far more concerned about people living by the precepts of these God-given directives that I am concerned over the debate about a rock in a lobby. Today we will look at the first Commandment. “You shall have no other gods before Me!”
The biggest issue in life is priorities.
You don’t have to be religious to know that. We all acknowledge it every day, dozens of times a day. We make our daily decisions based on the things that are most important to us. It is the essence of life for those of you who are list-makers; you draw up the lists of the things you plan to do, and then start numbering them in order of priority. Those, whose budget is stretched to the limits, stack up their bills according to priority rule, “How much money do I have? What can I put off paying for a while? Which creditor will be most heartless?”
Most of us manage our priorities reasonably well at these levels. Interestingly enough, we also do pretty well at the frightening extremities of life when there are emergencies. If our house catches fire, for instance, we’ll probably decide quickly and incisively about what to carry out and what to leave behind.
But life itself is a complicated call. The renowned preacher, George Buttrick came one day upon a farmer who had just found a lost sheep. When Buttrick asked how sheep wander away, the farmer answered, “They just nibble themselves lost.” They go from one grass tuft to another, until at last they have lost their way. And that also happens with life. Unless we purposely establish a structure of priorities, we will nibble away at each inconsequential tuft of decision until life is gone, and we have little idea what happened to it.
The priority of life is God. In a sense, priority is another name for God. When we draw up our list of things that matter most, the thing that we give first place to is God. Whether that is spelled with a capital “G”, or a lower case “g” depends on us. Whatever tops your list is your god. It can be the one, true God, or it can be a substitute. If it is your top priority, it is your god!
Some students of world religions say that people make gods in their own images. If so, the gods return the favor. We become like what we worship. Not only do we become like the god we worship, but we also allow this god to determine what kind of world we will have, what kind of government we will choose, what sorts of persons we will want to rule over us; this god determines how we will choose our work, how we will feel about it, and what we will think about our bodies. And, of course, it determines what we think of people and of friendships and of human relationships. If my god is cheap, shoddy and manageable, I will treat people the same way. Sometimes we profess to worship the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ, but we demonstrate, by our conduct, that we worship another god.
We become like the god we worship. That’s why the Ten Commandments begin with our relationship to God. We wouldn’t prioritize them that way, of course. Ask the average person for the most important commandment, and they will likely choose the one forbidding murder, or adultery or dishonesty. But these commandments are all derivative; they all flow from the first commandment, which sets God as our priority.
The commandments begin with God. They begin with God because what we think about God will eventually determine what we think of ourselves, of one another, and of life. In his study of Hebrew words, Benjamin Blech urges that we should use the word “love” in the sense the Hebrew root implies: “I will give.” Then, he says, the love test is simple: Do I want to do more for him or her than I want him or her to do for me?
This means an ultimate kind of giving. If God is our God, He should have all that we are. That is not only the essence of the first Commandment; it is also both its beauty and its glory. God wants all of you. What else would we dare offer God?
You and I want to be consumed by something. We want to be possessed by something bigger than ourselves. Something in us wants to live grandly, to give ourselves with abandonment to a purpose and a cause worthy of our lives.
If we are to be consumed, if it is our very nature to seek to be used, we had better choose passionately as to who or what will consume us, because you and I are of extreme importance to God. I am important to me just like you are important to you. After I have used me up, I have nothing left. I had better be sure I choose wisely when I give myself away!
Come to think of it, why should I give God all of me? Would’t it make more sense to give only a part to God? Why not give some to my interests in the world?
That is how life is frittered away. That is how we nibble our way to being lost. We give up our life in little pieces, some of them sad absurdities, and none of them worth mentioning in the same breath with God. If life has a hundred priorities, there is no priority. If life has a hundred points, it becomes pointless. We need to have one priority; one point, one purpose.
We declare our worth by what we worship. Is it money? If so, what a paltry price tag we put on ourselves. We prove that absurdity by a statement like, “What is he worth?” when we ask about how much money a person has. As if money equates with worth. Is it physical gratification that is our god? To settle for such is to say that there is no more to us than our blood and tissue and glands.
What of family and friendship and loyalties to state and country? Surely these are high callings. Few things seem more noble than a person dying for country or family. In the sitcom “Frasier,” Niles says to his father, “This new restaurant is to die for.” The father replies, “Family and country are to die for, a restaurant is for food.” Still, these are not the ultimate. Beautiful as is such devotion, it doesn’t fit the greatness of our capacity. Let God have all, and then from that all, give to others. But let them be a result of our highest devotion, not the end in itself.
If we give ourselves to anything less than God, we underestimate ourselves. The writer of Genesis tells us that we are created from the dust of the ground, but that we are inhabited by the breath of God. How pathetic and absurd for eternal creatures like you and me to pour ourselves into embracing that which is transient; that which cannot last. It is like a mentally disturbed mother who lays her baby aside in order to clutch a rag doll.
To love God is not to love life less, but to grasp it with a surer hand, a more sensitive one. With God at the center of our life and vision, we can see more clearly what is good and beautiful in all the rest of life. With God at the center, we are most surely what we are really meant to be.
But this is not the end of the matter. The more we give ourselves to God, the more we become like God. The more of us that God has, the more we have of God. This is the nature of relationships: If I would have more of you, I must give you more of me. What is true of our human relationships is even more magnificently true of our relationship with God.
The people that I have known who have been the most godly, have also been the most likable. They have a great excitement about living. How could it be otherwise when you see God at work everywhere? With such a viewpoint, life can hardly be dull. They also have a remarkable ability to roll with the punches, so that whatever happens to them, they find beauty and purpose in it.
When we fix our vision on God, we are confident that a divine purpose underlies all that is happening, and that no matter what persons or circumstances may do to us, or what we do to ourselves; God will work with us to ultimate good.
The godly people I have known have also been the most admirable. In a culture that manufactures its heroes in public relations offices and measures achievements by lines in print or by television sound bites, it’s exciting to find people who evoke our admiration without the aid of a press release.
I have met godly people in many places, and in all ages, shapes and sizes. They may be male or female, young or old, rich or poor. They can be found in every racial and ethnic category, and in cities and the country. But one thing they have in common: God is the ultimate issue in their lives. God is their priority.
Herein is the genius of the first commandment. Life must have a focus. If we live life as a scattershot, we will hit nothing of consequence. And focus is not enough; the focus must be right, or else we will invest our extraordinary potential in that which is, at best, trivial, and at worst, demonic.
The first commandment reminds us, by implication, that we are creatures of eternal worth. We are of such worth that we can have communion with God. If that isn’t breathtaking enough, the commandment insists that God desires our attention, because God created us to have fellowship with Him.
God gives us a commandment that we should have no other gods before Him, not because God wishes to fence us in, but because He wishes to set us free, to give us opportunity to fulfill the capacity of our humanity.
God desires to have all of you. And you, when God has all of you, will be given the wonder of fullness in God.
The first Commandment is the one from which all the others flow. It is the priority out of which all of life flows. We must have no other god than God!
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