Commandment 1 - First in Life

COMMANDMENT 1 - FIRST IN LIFE

Who or what comes first in your life?

That is the question which the first commandment challenges us to think about.

"I am the Lord your God. you shall have no other God but me".

Those words were originally uttered against a background where people believed in the existence of many gods.

Those gods were rather like ministers of state, each in charge of a particular department of life. Some prayed to the god of war if they were going out to battle or the god of fertility if they wanted a child.

Against this background of thinking, comes the voice of the one-time God declaring that what each god offered separately, he could offer himself and so there was no longer any need for rival gods. Hence he claimed "I am the Lord your God: you shall have no other gods but me".

Now you all may smile at such belief and think that this sermon should be addressed to some primitive tribe in darkest Africa or Central America.

But wait a moment!

What do you mean by the word "God"?

The famous theologian, Paul Tillich once defined the word "god" as "that reality which elicits from you your deepest feelings and your ultimate concern".

Let me repeat that, "Your god is that reality which elicits from you your deepest feelings and your ultimate concern".

To what do you attach your "deepest feelings"? And what, is your "ultimate concern"?

You may well declare Sunday by Sunday with all sincerity in the creed that you believe in one God, but do you have other "deities" which inspire your "deepest feelings" or constitute your "ultimate concern"?

I am reminded of a story in the New Testament which you may recall. It is about a rich man who claimed to keep all the commandments and asked Jesus what more he could do to be assured of eternal life.

Do you remember the answer which Jesus gave? He said, "Go and sell everything and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me".

We are told by the gospel writers that he went away a sad person because he was a person of great wealth.

There is no doubt that it was his wealth and not God, which elicited from him his "deepest feelings". It was his wealth and not God that was his "ultimate concern".

He may well claim to have kept all the commandments, but he had failed to keep the first. His god was just another god amongst others demanding his prime attention.

And we all know what happens to a house which is divided against itself - pulled from this way and then that way - until it finally collapses to rubble.

Unless you want your farm to collapse into a pile of rubble you had better decide to give God pride of place in your life.

God first - husband, wife second.

God first - children second.

God first - home and work second.

God first - the golf second.

God first - Manchester United second.

So I come back to the question I put to you at the beginning, "Who or what comes first in your life"?

And I remind you: The Old Testament says "I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods but me".

And the New Testament says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength".