Exodus 20:3-8
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” (Exodus 20:3-8)
For most people in the Western world the horizontal has totally eclipsed the vertical. Human relationships to each other are all-important; their relationship to God is of secondary or no importance. Even in the church, reconciling people to people, rather than reconciling people to God, has become top priority for many. Christians find it difficult to feel that violating the first table of the law is nearly as serious as violating the second table of the law. We cannot understand the Old Testament prescription of capital punishment for working on the Sabbath, for profanity, or for worshiping another deity.
Why is the command to love God with all our being the first and great commandment? Why are the first four of the Ten Commandments prohibitions of sin against God? Why not put them last, after the important ones like murder and adultery? Obviously Scripture holds that sin against God is of greater seriousness than sin against others.
God is the ultimate reality, the fundamental fact, the integrating factor of the universe. Therefore, to be rightly aligned with him is the most important relationship in human existence. To be in alignment with reality and truth is life; to be out of alignment is destruction and death. To leave God out of the equation of life or to diminish his role is like seeking to build a skyscraper without mathematics or to bake a cake without flour.
God knows this, so his commandments simply reinforce the facts. He treats this relationship as the most important because it is the most important.
Yet it is not simply a matter of reality and truth. God cares about this relationship. God is repeatedly called a jealous God. That is, it makes a difference to him whether or not we are rightly related to him. This word for jealousy in the Old Testament is the same word used when a husband is jealous of the affection of his wife. This is not a petty envy of legitimate competition. It is a profound caring and total unwillingness to allow any other to replace the prior and ultimate love relationship.
The first commandment has to do with our heart attitude, our thoughts, our personal relationship with God. But God is also interested in our deeds, what we do about how we feel. Furthermore, he is concerned about our words, how we use his name, what we say about him. Some tend to spiritualize the relationship with God and are careless with the external manifestations of that professed heart relationship. But that God is interested in deeds and words as well as in thoughts is clearly revealed in the first three commandments.
In the light of this, one’s trust and obedience, allegiance or love may be quite legitimate and never demand a special, conscious evaluation until the loves or loyalties come into conflict. Then one’s god stands revealed. At the point of choice, which love or loyalty we put before the other will determine who or what our true god is.
What is most valuable to me? What do I hold to be most irreplaceable? What would I be lost without? What do I think of with most intensity in the long stretches of my thoughts? What is my incentive for living? What gives my work meaning and purpose? This I worship.
A couple in Japan was at the point of divorce when God rescued them and their home by his grace through Christ Jesus. Unknown to me or to the young wife, the husband did not destroy the photographs of the other woman but put them in the bottom of a bureau drawer. Many months later, his wife discovered these photographs and in anger cut them to pieces. This made her husband so angry that the home was on the verge of breaking again. He said that the relationship with the other woman had been broken off, that there was no continuing contact of any kind, and that the pictures meant nothing. It is very hard for an outsider, let alone a wife, to believe that the pictures meant nothing when he took scissors and shredded her clothes in retaliation. Somehow there was unfaithfulness even though it was merely an outward form. God is a jealous God and will not countenance any competition for first place in our lives or the appearance of it.