I have many gods….but only one God

YOU! Are the most common god...

I love the Ten Commandments.  What an interesting study into the natural and moral law of God.  My Pastor has started a series on the 10 commandments (to listen to the sermons CLICK HERE).  Each week he is going through a commandment.  I am posting this a couple of weeks behind but two weeks ago was the first commandment.

Now the first commandment is the one that typically is used for the reason that the 10 commandments cannot be displayed on public property.  In recent history this has become one of the more controversial commandments, not only because of the First amendment debate but also because of the implications to everyday Christians who think that this only applies to worshipping Buddha, or Zeus or whatever…  Just like the transformers, however, there is more to this than meets the eye.  Much of this is taken from the sermon, so if you take a listen…many of the points here will sound familiar.

Commandment 1 – You shall have no other gods before Me. (Exodus 20:3)

Everyone has a god.  Now, some one of you are probably thinking “I have a god and it is God”.  Others, like atheists, say I have no god, nor do I believe in God.  Still others, like Kenneth Copeland will tell you, you are a god or you can become one (Mormans).  In order to rightly explain this we have to look at each one of these…

Christians – Most Christians will tell you that they don’t worship Buddha or anything along those lines so they follow the first commandment.  That may be, however, the furthest thing from the truth.  The truth is that anything can be a god to you…even yourself.   Your god can be…

–          Success and Money (Luke 16:13).  Yes you can worship one and not the other.  The question is which is the priority in your life… From which do you place your significance and security? The money you make (or have banked) or God?

–          Society (Galatians 1:10).  You can worship others opinion of you.  The question to you…which one carries the most weight for you, the opinion of others or the opinion of God?

–          Pleasure (1 Timothy 5:6).  You can worship doing whatever feels good.  You basically put your personal pleasure before God.  Living with a boyfriend… going out to party… pre-marital sex…  Homosexuality…  So the question…Which most affects your decision making, personal pleasure or living with God?

–          Family (Luke 14:26).  Yes you can replace God with the worship of your own family.  Now I can hear the Atheist (and some Christians) exploding right now.   What Jesus is saying is that God comes before family.  Our love for Him should look like contempt for everyone…even your family.  So now the question…Which takes prescedence?  Your family… or God?

–          Yourself (Proverbs 14:12).  Ahhhhhh worship of one’s self.  This covers a broad perspective.  Check this out…Ever heard or caught yourself saying the god I know would’nt  judge people for (fill in the blank with something that is expressly mentioned in the Bible)… CONGRATULATIONS!  You have created a god that doesn’t exist in the Bible, instead, you have created a god in the image of yourself. Go back up to the Pleasure god.  

Atheists – All atheist’s have a god to worship.  It can be any of the things listed above, but it could also include nature, or science.  Nature in the fact that they could worship protecting the environment, or the “Science” that claims that nature was able to create itself (evolution).  But even if you are an atheist or an agnostic, and you don’t buy into global warming or evolution, you more than likely worship one of the things listed above.  More than likely you worship yourself.  You might be thinking is that you determine your own destiny, or moral values, or world view.  This would make you a god in the most basic sense.

The first commandment is a call to worship only God.  To put aside all of the things that could distract you from being with God and focus on him.  If you are a Christian…your god can be anything that distracts you from the one true God!  If you’re an atheist, your god HAS taken you away from Him already!  Simply denying he exists doesn’t take away the fact that He is truly God.