Today we come to the first of the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods but me”.  You’ll remember that this Commandment was given to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai soon after they had escaped from the land of Egypt.  The Egyptians believed in an enormous number of different gods, and they used to paint or carve pictures of them on the walls and pillars of their temples.  So the people of Israel would have been used to seeing pictures of the Sun-god, the Nile-god, the Crocodile-god.  There were even four Hippopotamus-goddesses.  Of course, all this sounds very strange to us, but we must remember that the Egyptians really believed in them and worshipped them.

Belonging to God

God is our Maker and Sustainer

So the first thing the Israelites were taught was that there is only one God, who has made all things and keeps everything living alive.  So it is he who is also our Maker and Sustainer.  He has made us for himself alone, and has given us a soul – the real you and the real I which can never die – so that we may in the end see him and share his life in Heaven.  In other words, we are his property.  He owns us more than we own our pets, which are his anyway because he made them too.

Jesus died to save us

But when we human beings sinned and went against him by doing deliberately what we knew to be wrong, then we left his keeping and got into the hands of the Devil.  But God would not let us be lost as easily as that.  He came into this world of ours and was born in Bethlehem, becoming a human being, in order to rescue us, so that we might be his again.  But he had to pay for us.  Make no mistake about that.  He had to pay for us with his life.  He was willing to give his all for us, and he did so on the Cross.  So in the hymn we sing:

“He died that we might be forgiven,
he died to make us good,
that we might go at last to heaven,
saved by his precious blood.

There was no other good enough
to pay the price of sin,
he only could unlock the gate
of heaven and let us in” (1)

Thus by his death on the Cross, Jesus has bought us back or redeemed us.  So now we are doubly his, for not only has he made us but he has also paid for us with his own life to bring us back to his safe keeping.  As St Paul puts it, “…do you not know that…you are not your own?  For you were bought with a price…” (NRSV, 1 Corinthians 6: 19, 20).

Putting God first in our lives

So we can see how the First Commandment applies to us even more than it did to the People of Israel.  “You shall have no other gods but me”.  And because we belong to God before we belong to anyone else, we must put him first in our lives before anyone or anything else.  That is what God demands of us and we have no right to refuse it.  As Jesus himself has said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me…” (NRSV, Matthew 10:37).

Other gods

“You shall have no other gods but me”.  “Other gods” doesn’t just refer to gods such as those worshipped by the ancient Egyptians.  People can put other things in place of God by treating them as the most important things in their lives.  Some people treat themselves like that by thinking and acting as if they were what mattered most in the world.  In other words, they make a little god of themselves.  Or people may live for pleasure and amusement as the things that are all-important.  Others may love money most, and you can love money whether you have it or not.  There was a man once who, when he was young, had very little money but he loved it so much that he toiled and pinched and scraped to make a lot for himself.  And one day, when he was old, he was telling his parish priest how successful he had been in making money.  And the priest said, “You can’t take it with you when you go, you know”.  And the old man answered, “I know, but don’t I wish I could”.

Dedication

But God made us for himself, to possess him and to be possessed by him; and people who live for other things, such as themselves or pleasure or money, when they come to die will not have discovered what this life is all about.  But we shall never live for God until we really belong to him, and we shall not really belong to God until we freely give ourselves to him.  We should do this in particular in our daily morning and evening prayers and at every Eucharist so that we may be truly his all and every day.

Remember, Jesus on the Cross has given himself to us completely.  He kept nothing back whatsoever.  And we have to give ourselves completely to him.  Jesus is not and never will be satisfied with anything less than our whole selves.  It is not enough to offer him half or even three-quarters, and to keep the remaining half or quarter from him.  We have to make a present to him of our whole selves and our whole life to be his for ever.

SUMMARY

1. There is only one God and we belong to him, first, because he made us for himself; and secondly because, when we sinned and left his keeping, his only Son Jesus Christ gave his life on the Cross to restore us to him again.

2. Therefore we must put God first in our lives before ourselves and before anyone or anything else; and in our daily prayers and at the Eucharist we should give ourselves to him gladly and completely so that we may truly his all and every day.

Reference

Alexander, C.F. (1848) There is a green hill far away.  Available from: http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/t/t435.html  (Accessed 19 August 2010) (Internet).