Who’s My Number
One?
“You shall have no other gods before me.” Exodus 20:3
(NIV)
Adolph Menzel created a painting titled Frederick
the Great’s Address to His Generals Before the Battle of Leuthen.
This historical piece depicts Frederick’s speech to his generals in December
1757 during the Seven Years’ War before their famous battle in Silesia against
the Austrians.
Menzel worked on it from 1859-1861, but
never finished it. The monumental painting contains the background and the
generals standing in a semi-circle, but the main figure of Frederick the Great
was left blank.
Menzel’s famous painting is a picture of
many lives. The background of career, interests, pursuits and achievement is
complete. The faces of significant people like family, friends and colleagues
surround. But the central and most important figure is left incomplete—Jesus.
All of the Ten Commandments are important
and worthy of study, but if we fail to worship God properly, then the rest of
the Ten Commandments are essentially worthless. God begins these important
instructions with our relationship with Him, first and foremost.
Take, for example, oxygen. If we are
unable to breathe, nothing else matters until we take care of what is impairing
our ability to breathe oxygen. Is eating important? Yes. Do we need to drink
water? Of course. However, breathing is our first priority. Why? Well, we can
go weeks without eating and can go days without water, but we can only go
minutes without oxygen. The same is true spiritually.
The Israelites were surrounded by nations
that worshiped other gods. God needed to make the point unmistakably clear that
He was not first among many gods. Rather, He was the only God, and apart from
Him, no other God existed. Since only one God exists, to worship
anything other than Him is to worship
created things rather than the Creator.
The same temptation exists today. We can
place our worship of other things before our worship of God, and in so doing,
create other gods. These gods may not be made of wood and stone like in ancient
days, but whatever we spend our time pursuing, whether money or appearances,
appetites or things, we have made the objects of our pursuits into gods because
we have placed our quest of objects before our pursuit of God.
There is only one true God. Everything
else is a fake. Let us make our worship of the one true God priority number one.
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