No Other Gods

"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."

So when He says, "You shall have no other gods", what is He talking about? God gave these commands to His people just after they were delivered from slavery in a nation whose people had a god or goddess for everything. Ancient Egypt was the most god-filled nation of its time, but God had used ten plagues to demonstrate to them that their gods had no reality, substance or power. Osiris, Isis, and Ra had nothing on the Lord God of the Israelites.

Additionally, they were going to a land whose tribal culture was filled with a glut of gods and goddesses for every eventuality and occasion. Prominent among these were such as the fertility goddess Astoreth, the prosperity god Baal, and the blood thirsty god Molech. These had nothing on God either.

In fact, every culture on earth that did not maintain the knowledge and worship of the One True God eventually developed a paganistic pantheon of gods and goddesses to worship and serve, who were usually represented by images carved from inanimate wood and stone by the hands of the men who invented the gods. Whatever these deities were, whether demonic manifestations or imaginative constructs of the human mind, they never were anything and never will be anything other than figments and myths. The One True God, on the other, has continually demonstrated his Divine place as the Supreme of Supremes over all the universe.

Now some might point to the historical and cultural context of the first commandment and say, "Well, we don't worship those ancient gods, so this law doesn't apply to us." First of all, there are cultures who continue to venerate the deities of the past, but as I said before, every culture that does not maintain the knowledge and worship of the One True God will eventually develop its own worship structure.

So what are the gods of our culture? Money? Pleasure? Cars? Entertainment? Politics? Personal Freedom? There are many things honored in our culture above all other considerations. The truth of the first commandment is that we should give nothing a more important place in our lives than that place held by the One True God. He who created us, and who sent His only Son to die to save us, deserves the only place of worship in our lives, and when we have allowed something to be more important to us than serving, worshiping and obeying Him, we have created a god for ourselves.