The First Commandment

"I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
You shall have no other gods before Me."

By the time the Israelites received the Ten Commandments from God, they already had a 2500 years history of hearing from Him. Their oral traditions had preserved the Creation account, the genealogies of the descendants of Adam, the record of Noah, his ark and the great flood. 430 before Moses brought them to Sinai, God had changed the name of their ancestor Abram of Ur to Abraham, friend of God Most High, and for one hundred years, their Father Abraham lived a life of faith walking and talking with God. Abraham was the one who received a promise of a people and a nation; Isaac was the son in which Abraham's seed would be called; Jacob was the one with whom God wrestled personally and whose name was changed from conman to prince of God. The twelve patriarchs were recent memories of the oldest in the crowd, and their promise to Joseph had been personally fulfilled as they brought his bones with them out of Egypt. When these people heard the law of God being handed down from on high, they knew Who it was Who was speaking.

Many people today have no working concept of Who God is and what God has done. So when they hear the Ten Commandments or anything else from the Bible, they ask the question: "By what right has this God imposed His rules on us?"

God says it Himself, when giving this law to His people: I am the God who has brought you out of bondage and slavery in the Land of Egypt. He didn't have to tell them anything else, as they already had the rich heritage of knowing the Lord as the personal God of their people for 400 years. But it might benefit us to realize, He is the God who created all things; in Him do all things consist; by His will do all things continue; and for His pleasure do all things exist. He is the Supreme Being, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

He is the God who sees me, the God who knows me personally and calls me by name.

He is the God who did everything He could to reconcile me to Himself.

He is the God who loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life!

He is the God who came personally in the form of a man and a servant that He might sympathize with us in our weaknesses; who humbled Himself in obedience, bearing our sin in His body on the cross, who shed His own blood and gave His own life to save those who would call upon His name for all eternity.

He is the God who turned on the lights, and will at the end of all things turn them off and make all things new in a spoken word.

So who is this God who lays down the law for us? He is, frankly, the only One who can rightfully do so. And He says we are to recognize no other gods than Him.