None Other

Date: March 3, 2014

“It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you.” Deuteronomy 6:13-14

Beloved,

A father was traveling and bought a stuffed animal for his young daughter. It was a baby crocodile. The two year old could not say crocodile, so she called it a frog. No matter how the father tried to explain to his daughter that it was not a frog, but a crocodile, the young child was insistent that it was a frog. Truth did not matter to this young child, but only her version of the truth. In her world, the truth was that baby crocodile was a frog and nothing else mattered.

Like this young child, we too often only believe our version of the truth. We come to God not as he is, but as we want him to be. The only way that we can know that we are coming to God in truth is by coming to God as he is revealed in the Word of Truth, the Holy Scriptures. The first commandment says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” The Lord demands all our worship and all our devotion. He does not want us to bow down before any other gods. When we fail to worship God, we enter into idolatry. Idolatry is to value something or someone in a way that hinders our supreme love and devotion that belongs to God. It could be taking a good thing and making it an ultimate thing.

We have been commanded by God to have no other gods before Him. Our truth is never as important as God’s truth. We cannot hold to our version of the truth about God and this world, but we must hold God’s truth as revealed in the Bible. Ask yourself, “Is there anything you value or desire more than God?” If there is, then you are breaking the first commandment. You must turn back to God for, “It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear.”

We all have broken the first commandment and followed after other gods in pursuing our own version of truth. God demands true worship. And true worship can only be found in Jesus. The law came through Moses, grace and truth through Jesus Christ. God’s truth can only be seen in the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Come to the truth, come to Christ.