Exodus 20.3; Deuteronomy 5.7

“…You shall have no other gods before me.”

In His infinite mercy and love, God redeemed Israel from Egypt and captivity that He might possess them unto Himself as a people for His glory. He gave them His Law as a temporal means of enabling them to live together in a way that was approved by Him and beneficial to all other human beings.

But for Israel to realize the full benefits of God’s covenant love, they must reciprocate love to God as their highest priority. They must “have” God as their God with as much zeal and love as He had shown in taking them as His people. What does it mean to “have” God?

In the Hebrew language the sense of the possessive is expressed by a state of being verb together with the preposition, “to,” and either a noun or a pronominal suffix. In the first commandment, God literally says to His people, “Not there shall be to you other gods before My face.” Let us note three emphatic aspects of this commandment, the first today, the other two on subsequent days.

First, the commandment begins with the negative particle, “Not.” The commandments of God are phrased in terms meant to negate our natural, sinful tendencies. In our natural, unsaved condition, human beings tend to attribute their wellbeing to all manner of things, circumstances, and other people. They turn from the knowledge of God, which He makes known to them in the creation, to worship and serve created things, as though these were the source of their wellbeing (Rom. 1.18ff). Therefore, people attend to such things, circumstances, and relationships with a devotion and determination by means of which, in their own best efforts, they intend to provide for their maximum wellbeing. Rather than trust God and rest in Him, they attribute to unreliable sources, together with their own strength and wiles, the responsibility for providing the blessings God promises and God alone can provide.

Hence, emphatically at the beginning of this and all the commandments, God puts His people on notice that being His people requires that they resist all sinful tendencies to rely on any creatures, or their own efforts, in order to realize the blessings He alone can give. He alone is eternal and unchanging and loving to the point of self-sacrifice. He alone has redeemed and possessed Him. Thus it would be an affront of eternal consequence to ascribe to anything other than God that which is proper to Him alone.

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