Most of us want to be happy. We want peace, joy, love, acceptance, success, security, comfort, possessions, money, sex, etc. – the list seems endless. In life we look to different things to provide the life we desire. We chase hard after them – career, love and romance, power and money, possessions, etc. But most of us never make it to the top – we die in pursuit of our dreams, never arriving. We never learn that the mountain we have been climbing all of these years has nothing at the top – it is empty and lonely. It does not provide the life we are hoping for. But God has a better way for us to get our desires met in this life.
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (Genesis 20:2)
There are three other points that Exodus 20:2 brings to light before we get into the Ten Commandments themselves. The first is, “I am the Lord your God”. Some lists of the Ten Commandments start with this as the first commandment, that God is our Lord. As a statement, it is prerequisite to keeping the Ten Commandments, laying the foundation for obedience and successful living. We must start with God as Lord of our life. If anything else is seated on the throne of our life, nothing that we do really matters. God must be at the center of our existence. This is the foundation for true Christianity that our entire life will rest upon – faith in God. Hebrews 11:6 reads:
“And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” (Hebrews 11:6)
Faith in God is essential to pleasing God. Keeping the commandments without faith does not please God. Obedience to the Ten Commandments begins with faith in God. Making God the Lord of our life is one of the overall messages of the entire Bible. Hebrews 11 lists many of the key characters in the Bible that exercised faith in God to energize their lives and enable them to do the things they did.
Before we are born again, most of us, maybe all of us, have false gods that we put on the throne of our lives. Common ones are money, sex, achievement, power, pleasure, autonomy, good works, religion, politics, family, possessions, beauty, health, etc. We look to our false gods to give us these things and to bring meaning, hope, and happiness into our lives. In his book “Counterfeit Gods” Tim Keller groups them into four overarching false gods – comfort, approval, control, and power. We start life with false gods on the throne of our life, thinking they will bring us happiness, success, the good life – whatever our end desires might be. The ancient pagans formalized these things into named false gods with statues and temples. Today, most of us have abstract temples to our unnamed false gods. We serve these false gods who promise us a false hope. We acquire possessions, money, sex partners, family, homes, careers, sport’s trophies, and so on, in the hope that the false gods associated with these will satisfy whatever it is that is driving us.
We don’t even realize we are doing this. It usually starts very early in life, can become a primary source of our identity, and drives most of our actions as we follow the promise it puts before us. A good example of the false gods’ inability to deliver on the promise comes from the NFL quarterbacks who have won the Superbowl and are quoted as saying “Is this all there is”, reporting to us that “There is nothing there” (Roger Staubach, Troy Aikman, Nick Foles, etc.). They reached the mountaintop and behold, it is empty, it does not deliver. False gods deliver disillusionment rather than the life they promise us. The Ten Commandments start with acknowledging this, and that that the only true god is the Lord our God who reveals Himself to us in the Bible. We need this starting point because most of us don’t win the Superbowl – we don’t have the mountaintop experience where we see that the false gods are lying to us and do not deliver on their promises. Only the God of the Bible can truly deliver the promised life we desire.
The Ten Commandments start with God, the Lord our God, being on the throne of our life. This is the beginning of true life, the only solid foundation for a life that delivers on its promise – a life of hope, a life of joy, a life of peace, a life of wisdom, a life of love. What are some of the false gods you have followed in your life over the years? How have they failed to deliver on their promises? Describe a time when you had a mountaintop experience apart from God and how it made you feel. Now describe a mountaintop experience that had God at the center – how did that experience make you feel? What false gods do you still have in your life? What are some of the things they have driven you to do over the years of your life? What are some ways you can remove the false gods from your life? What are some ways to put God on the throne of your life? How can you keep Him there every day? If you have not made the God of the Bible the Lord of your life, I encourage you to do this in prayer, right now.
Lord God, I come before You and ask that You would be the Lord of my life. Help me to remove the false gods from my life and to place You at the center of my life, on the throne of my life. Remind me every day that You are the Lord my God. Teach me to look to You for my hopes and dreams in life rather than looking at the things the world says I should look to. Lead me in the everlasting way, bringing me true joy, true peace, true life. In Jesus name I pray, amen.
“Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4)
Resource – “Counterfeit Gods” by Tim Keller
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